CHINESE
PAINTERS
RAPHAEL PETRUCCt
CHINESE PAINTERS
CHINESE PAINTERS
A CRITICAL STUDY
BY
RAPHAEL PETRUCCI
TRANSLATED BY
FRANCES SHAVER
WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE BY
LAURENCE BINYON
OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
AND WITH TWENTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS IN DUOTONE
NEW YORK
BRENTANO'S
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
BRENTANO'S
All rights reserved
THE-PLIMPTON- PRESS
NORWOOD • M ASS • U- S A
PREFACE
A TRANSLATOR can have but one aim — to
present the thought of the author faithfully.
In this case an added responsibility is involved,
since one who had so much to give to the world has been
taken in his prime. M. Petrucci has written at length
of art in the Far East in his exhaustive work La Philo-
sophie de la Nature dans VArt d'Extreme Orient and
elsewhere, and has demonstrated the wide scope of
his thought and learning. The form and style in
Peintres Chinois are the result of much condensa-
tion of material and have thus presented problems
in translation, to which earnest thought has been given.
In deference to the author's wish the margin has
not been overladen and only a short tribute, by one
able to speak of him from personal knowledge, has
been inchided, together with a few footnotes and a
short bibliography of works of reference indespensable
to the student who will pursue this absorbing study.
The translator takes this opportunity to make grate-
ful acknowledgement of her debt to the authors named,
who have made such valuable information available,
and to those friends who have read the manuscript
and made many helpful suggestions.
Frances Seaver
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
IN Raphael Petrucci, who died early in 19 17, the
world has lost one of the ablest and most devoted
students and interpreters of the art of the Far
East. He was only forty-five years of age, in the prime
of his powers, brimming with energy and full of enter-
prises that promised richly. Though he did not die in
the field, he was none the less a victim of the w^ar. He
had exhausted himself by his labours with the Bel-
gian ambulances at La Panne, for Belgium was his
adopted country. He had a house in Brussels, filled
with a collection of Chinese and Japanese art, and a
little cottage near the coast just over the borders of
Holland. He came of the great and ancient Sienese
family of the Petrucci, but his mother was French and
he spent much of his earlier life in Paris, before settling
in Brussels and marrying one of the daughters of the
painter Verwee. He had also spent some time in
Russia. In Brussels he was attached to the Institut
Solvay.
He was a man of science, a student of and writer on
sociology and biology. He lectured on art and had a
knowledge of the art of the world which few men in
Europe rivalled. He wrote a philosophic novel, La
Porte de F Amour et de la Mort, which has run through
7
8 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
several editions. He published a book on Michel-
angelo's poetry. At the same time he was a scientific
engineer. When war broke out Petrucci was on his
way home from Italy, where he had been engaged, I
beheve, on some large engineering project and he only
got out of Switzerland into France by the last train
which left Basle. He came to England for a time, look-
ing after a number of Belgian refugees, including some
very distinguished artists. At the end of 19 14 he was
engaged by the India office to do some valuable work
in London on the collection of Chinese and Tibetan
paintings brought back from Tun-huang by Sir Aurel
Stein. He then worked at La Panne for the Belgian
army hospital (he had had a medical training in his
youth), went to Provence for a rest, fell ill and died in
Paris after an operation.
Raphael Petrucci was a man who seemed to rein-
carnate the boundless curiosity and the various abihty
of the men of the Italian Renaissance. But for some
years before his death he had concentrated his powers
chiefly on the study of Oriental art, of the Chinese
language, and of Buddhist iconography. His most
important work in this line is La Philosophie de la
Nature dans FArt d'Extreme Orient, a sumptuously
printed folio published by Laurens in Paris, with il-
lustrations by the Kokka Company, and written with
as much charm as insight. Petrucci's knowledge of
Chinese gave him an authority in interpreting Chinese
art which writers on the subject have rarely combined
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 9
with SO much understanding of art in general, though
as a connoiseur he was sometimes over-sanguine. His
translation from a classic of Chinese art-criticism,
originally pubhshed in a learned magazine, has lately
appeared in book form. With his friend, Professor
Chavannes, whose death, also in the prime of Hfe, we
have had to deplore still more recently, Petrucci edited
the first volume of the splendid series Ars Asiatica.
The present work, intended for the general reader and
lover of art, illustrates his gift for luminous condensa-
tion and the happy treatment of a large theme.
A man of winning manners, a most generous and
loyal friend, Petrucci wore his manifold learning
lightly; with immense energy and force of character,
he was simple and warm-hearted and interested in the
small things as well as the great things of hfe.
Laurence Binyon
British Museum
October, 19 19
CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface by the Translator 5
Biographical Note by Laurence Binyon 7
Introduction 15
PART ONE. TECHNIQUE
I. Equipment of the Painter 21
II. Representation of Forms 26
III. Division of Subjects 33
IV. Inspiration 38
PART TWO. THE EVOLUTION OF CHINESE
PAINTING
I. Origins 45
II. Before the Intervention of Buddhism 46
III. The Intervention of Buddhism 54
IV. The Tang Period — 7TH to ioth Centuries... 58
V. The Sung Period — ioth to 13TH Centuries.... 72
VI. The Yuan Period — 13TH and 14TH Centuries.. 92
VII. The Ming Period — 14TH to 17TH Centuries. . . 114
VIII. The Ch'ing Period — 17TH to 2oth Centuries. .. . 131
Conclusion 140
Bibliography 149
Index of Painters and Periods 151
II
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
I. Sculptured stones of the Han dynasty. Second to
third centuries. Rubbings taken by the
Chavannes expedition 23
II. Portion of a scroll by Ku K'ai-chih. British Mu-
seum, London 27
III. Kwanyin. Eighth to tenth centuries. Painting
brought from Tun-huang by the Pelliot expedi-
tion. The Louvre, Paris 31
IV. Palace of Kiu Cheng-kung by Li Chao-tao. T'ang
period. Collection of V. Goloubew 34
V. Portrait of Lii Tung-ping by T'eng Ch'ang-yu.
T'ang period. Collection of August Jaccaci.
Lent to the Metropolitan Museum, New York.* 39
VI. Painting by an unknown artist. T'ang period.
Collection of R. Petrucci 47
VII. Geese. Sung period. British Museum, London. . 51
VIII. White Eagle. Sung period. Collection of R.
Petrucci 59
IX. Horseman followed by two attendants. Sung
period. Collection of A. Stoclet 63
X. Landscape in the style of Hsia Kuei. Sung period.
Collection of Martin White 67
XI. Landscape by Ma Lin. Sung period. Collection
of R. Petrucci 73
XII. Mongol horseman returning from the Hunt, by Chao
Meng-fu. Yiian period. Doucet collection . . 77
XIII. Pigeons by Ch'ien Hsiian. Yiian period. Collec-
tion of R. Petrucci 85
* Now owned by Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss.
13
14 ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
XIV. Bamboos in monochrome by Wu Chen. Yiian
period. Musee Guimet 93
XV. Paintings of the Yiian or early Ming period. Style
of the Northern School. Collection of R.
Petrucci 97
XVI. Portrait of a priest. Yiian or early Ming period.
Collection of H. Riviere loi
XVII. Horse. Painting by an unknown artist. Yiian or
early Ming period. Doucet collection 105
XVIII. Visit to the Emperor by the Immortals from on
high. Ming period. British Museum, London 109
XIX. Egrets by Lin Liang. Ming period. Collection of
Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Junior 115
XX. Flowers and Insects. Ming period. Collection of
R. Petrucci 119
XXI. Landscape. Ming period. Bouasse-Lebel col-
lection 1 25
XXII. Beauty inhaling the fragrance of a peony. Ming
period. Collection of V. Goloubew 133
XXIII. Halt of the Imperial Hunt. Ming period. Six-
teenth century. Collection of R. Petrucci. . 137
XXIV. Painting by Chang Cheng. Eighteenth century.
Collection of M. Worch 141
XXV. Tiger in a Pine Forest. Eighteenth to nineteenth
centuries. Collection of V. Goloubew 145
'o*-
INTRODUCTION
WHATEVER its outward expression, human
thought remains essentially unchanged and,
throughout all of its manifestations, is
fundamentally the same. Varying phases are but
accidents and underneath the divers wrappings of
historic periods or different civilizations, the heart
as well as the mind of man has been moved by the
same desires.
Art possesses a unity like that of nature. It is
profound and stirring, precisely because it blends
and perpetuates feeling and intelligence by means
of outward expressions. Of all human achievements
art is the most vital, the one that is dowered with
eternal youth, for it awakens in the soul emotions
which neither time nor civilization has ever radically
altered. Therefore, in commencing the study of
an art of strange appearance, what we must
seek primarily is the exact nature of the complexity
of ideas and feelings upon which it is based. Such is
the task presented to us, and since the problem which
we here approach is the general study of Chinese
»5
l6 INTRODUCTION
painting, we must prepare ourselves first to master
the peculiarities of its appearance and technique, in
order to understand later on the motives which
inspired it.
While the first part of this study will carry us far
from our habitual modes of thought, the second part
will bring us back into a domain which our own phi-
losophies, sciences and arts have already made fa-
mihar. Admittedly, Chinese painting is governed by
distinctive ideas. Born of a civilization vastly dif-
ferent from our own, it may at times appear in a guise
that seems incomprehensible. It would be astonish-
ing, however, if Western intelligence were unable to
grasp an aesthetic code of a magnitude which is too
great to be ignored.
The progress of history and of criticism has given
us the opportunity to reach a comprehension of the
most pecuHar formulas. Our culture is sufficiently
broad to allow us to perceive the beauty of an Egyp-
tian fresco or an Assyrian bas-relief as well as of a
Byzantine mosaic or a painting of the Renaissance.
We have therefore no excuse for remaining inaccessible
to the art of the Far East and we have surely all the
mental vigor that is requisite in order to accustom
ourselves to the foreign nature of its presentation.
It is in the reafm of painting that this foreign element
is most noticeable. This is due partly to a special
technique and partly to the nature of the doctrines
which serve as its inspiration.
INTRODUCTION 17
It behooves us then to acquaint ourselves with
these new aspects of the human soul. That is the
justification for this little book. It forms an intro-
duction in which gaps are shown without attempt at
conceahiient and is presented in all modesty.
PART ONE
TECHNIQUE
19
I. EQUIPMENT OF THE PAINTER
WHERE our painters have chosen wood or
canvas as a ground, the Chinese have em-
ployed silk or paper. While our art recog-
nizes that drawing itself, quite apart from painting,
is a sufficient objective, drawing and painting have al-
ways been closely intermingled in the Far East. While
the mediums used in Europe for painting in color,
distemper, tempera and oil, led to an exact study of
form, the colors employed by the Orientals — at times
brilhant, at times subdued with an almost studied
restraint — preserved a singular fluidity and lent them-
selves to undefined evanescences which gave them a
surprising charm.
The early paintings were generally done on cotton,
coarse silk or paper. In the eighth century, under
the T'ang dynasty, the use of finer silk began.
The dressing was removed with boihng water, the
silk was then sized and smoothed with a paddle.
The use of silken fabric of the finest weave, prepared
with a thick sizing, became general during the Sung
dynasty. Papers were made of vegetable fibres, prin-
cipally of bamboo. Being prepared, as was the silk,
with a sizing of alum, they became practically inde-
21
22 CHINESE PAINTERS
structible. Upon these silks and papers the painter
worked with brush and Chinese ink/ color being intro-
duced with more or less freedom or restraint.
The brushes are of different types. Each position
of the brush conforms to a specific quahty of the line,
either sharp and precise or broad and quivering, the
ink spreading in strong touches or thinning to delicate
shades.
The colors are simple, of mineral or vegetable origin.
Chinese painters have ahvays avoided mixing colors
so far as possible. From malachite they obtained
several shades of green, from cinnabar or sulphide of
mercury, a number of reds. They knew also how to
combine mercury, sulphur and potash to produce
vermilion. From peroxide of mercury they drew
coloring powders which furnished shades ranging from
brick red to orange yellow. During the T'ang dynasty
coral was ground to secure a special red, w^hile white
was extracted from burnt oyster shells. White lead
was later substituted for this lime white. Carmine
lake they obtained from madder, yellow^s from the
sap of the rattan, blues from indigo. To these must
1 Chinese ink is a very different composition from the ink of
Western countries. It is a solid made of soot obtained by burn-
ing certain plants, which is then combined with glue or oil and
moulded into a cake and dried. Other ingredients may be added
to produce sheen or a dead finish. It improves with age if
properly kept. The cake is moistened and rubbed on a slab,
and the ink thus obtained must be used in a special waj' and
with special care to produce the full effect. — Translator.
TECHNIQUE 25
be added the different shades of Chinese ink and
lastly, gold in leaf and in powder.
The brush-stroke in the painting of the Far East
is of supreme importance. We know that this could
not be otherwise if we recall that the characters in
Chinese writing are ideographs, not actually written,
but rather drawn. The stroke is not a mere formal,
lifeless sign. It is an expression in which is reflected the
beauty of the thought that inspired it as well as the
quality of the soul of him who gives it form. In
wTiting, as in painting, it reveals to us the character
and the conception of its author. Placed at the service
of certain philosophical ideas, which will be set forth
later on, this technique w^as bound to lead to a special
code of Aesthetics. The painter seeks to suggest with
an unbroken line the fundamental character of a form.
His endeavor, in this respect, is to simplify the objec-
tive images of the world to the extreme, replac-
ing them with ideal images, which prolonged medi-
tation shall have freed from every non-essential. It
may therefore be readily understood how the brush-
stroke becomes so personal a thing, that in itself it
serves to reveal the hand of the master. There is no
Chinese book treating of painting which does not dis-
cuss and lay stress upon the value of its aesthetic code.
11. REPRESENTATION OF FORMS
IT has often been said that in Chinese painting, as
in Japanese painting, perspective is ignored. Noth-
ing is further from the truth. This error arises
from the fact that we have confused one system of
perspective with perspective as a whole. There are
as many systems of perspective as there are conven-
tional laws for the representation of space.
The practice of drawing and painting offers the
student the following problem in descriptive geometry:
to represent the three dimensions of space by means of
a plane surface oj two dimensions. The Egyptians
and Assyrians solved this problem by throwing down
vertical objects upon one plane, which demands a
great effort of abstraction on the part of the observer.
European perspective, built up in the fifteenth century
upon the remains of the geometric knowledge of the
Greeks, is based on the monocular theory used by the
latter. In this system, it is assumed that the picture
is viewed with the eye fixed on a single point. There-
fore the conditions of foreshortening — or distorting
the actual dimensions according to the angle from
which they are seen — are governed by placing in har-
mony the distance of the eye from the scheme of the
26
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-i?
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TECHNIQUE 29
picture, the height of the eye in relation to the objects
to be depicted, and the relative position of these
objects with reference to the surface employed.
But, in assuming that the picture is viewed with the
eye fixed on a single point, we put ourselves in condi-
tions which are not those of nature. The European
painter must therefore compromise with the exigencies
of binocular vision, modify the too abrupt fading of
forms and, in fine, evade over-exact principles. Thus
he arrives at a perspective de sentiment, which is the
one used by our masters.
Chinese perspective . was formulated long before
that of the Europeans and its origins are therefore
different. It was evolved in an age when the method
of superimposing different registers to indicate differ-
ent planes was still being practiced in bas-reliefs.
The succession of planes, one above the other, when
codified, led to a system that was totally different
from our monocular perspective. It resulted in a
perspective as seen from a height. No account is
taken of the habitual height of the eye in relation to
the picture. The line of the horizon is placed very
high, parallel lines, instead of joining at the horizon,
remain parallel, and the different planes range one
above the other in such a way that the glance em-
braces a vast space. Under these conditions, the
picture becomes either high and narrow — a hanging
picture — to show the successive planes, or broad in
the form of a scroll, unrolling to reveal an endless
30 CHINESE PAINTERS
panorama. These are the "Uvo forms best known
under their Japanese names of kakemono and
makimono.^
But the Chinese painter must attenuate the forms
where they are parallel, give a natural appearance to
their position on different levels and consider the
degree of their reduction demanded by the various
planes. Even he must compromise with binocular
vision and arrive at a perspective de sentiment which,
like our own, while scientifically false, is artistically
true. To this Hnear perspective is added moreover
an atmospheric perspective.
Having elected from a very early time to paint
in monochrome, Chinese painters were led by the
nature of this medium to seek to express atmospheric
perspective by means of tone values and harmony
of shading instead of by color. Thus they were
familiar with chiaroscuro before the European painters.
Wang Wei established the principles of atmospheric
perspective in the eighth century. He explains how
tints are graded, how the increasing thickness of layers
of air deprives distant objects of their true coloring,
substituting a bluish tinge, and how forms become
indistinct in proportion as their distance from the
observer increases. His testimony in this respect is
similar to that of Leonardo da Vinci in his "Treatise
on Painting."
* The Chinese terms are Li Chou for a vertical painting and
Heng P'i for a horizontal painting. — Translator.
PLATE III. KWANYIN. EIGHTH TO TENTH CENTURIES
Painting brought from Tun-huang by the Pelliot Expedition. The Louvre,
Paris.
III. DIVISION OF SUBJECTS
THE Chinese divide the subjects of painting into
four principal classes, as follows:
Landscape.
Man and Objects.
Flowers and Birds.
Plants and Insects.
Nowhere do w^e see a predominant place assigned
to the drawing or painting of the human figure. This
alone is sufficient to mark the wide difference between
Chinese and European painting.
The exact name for Landscape is translated by the
words mountain and water picture. They recall the
ancient conception of Creation on which the Oriental
system of the world is founded. The mountain
exemplifies the teeming life of the earth. It is
threaded by veins w^herein waters continuously flow.
Cascades, brooks and torrents are the outward evi-
dence of this inner travaiL By its own superabun-
dance of life, it brings forth clouds and arrays itself in
mists, thus being a manifestation of the two principles
which rule the life of the universe.
The second class, Man and Objects, must be under-
stood principally as concerning man, his works, his
33
34 C H I N E S E P A I N T E R S
belongings, and, in a general sense, all things created
by the hand of man, in combination with landscape.
This was the convention in early times when the first
painters whose artistic purpose can be formulated
with certainty, portrayed the history of the legendary
beings of Taoism, — the genii and fairies dwelling
amidst an imaginary Nature. The records tell us, to
be sure, that the early masters painted portraits, but
it was at a later period that Man and Objects com-
posed a class distinct from Landscape, a period re-
sponsible for those ancestral portraits painted after
death, which are almost always attributable to ordi-
nary artisans. Earlier they endeavored to apply to
figure painting the methods, technique and laws es-
tablished for an ensemble in which the thought of
nature predominated. Special rules bearing on this
subject are sometimes found of a very early date but
there is no indication that they were collected into a
definite system until the end of the seventeenth cen-
tury. Up to the present time our only knowledge of
their content is through a small treatise published at
the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The third class, Flowers and Birds, deals with those
paintings wherein the Chinese gave rein to their fancy
for painting the bird in conjunction with the plant
life associated with its home and habits. The bird
is treated with a full understanding of its life, and
flowers are studied with such a comprehension of
their essential structure that a botanist can readily
PI-ATE IV. PALACE OF KIU CIIENG-KUNG BY LI CHAO-TAQ
T'ang Period. Collection of V. Goloubew.
TECHNIQUE 37
detect the characteristics typical of a species, despite
the simplifications which an artist always imposes on
the complexity of forms.
This general class is subdivided. The epidendrum,
the iris, the orchis and the chrysanthemum be-
came special studies each of which had its own
masters, both from the standpoint of painting itself,
and of the apphcation of the aesthetic rules which
govern this art. The bamboo and the plum tree are
also allied to this class. Under the influence of philo-
sophic and symbolic ideas they furnished a special
category of subjects to the imagination of the painter
and form a division apart which has its own laws and
methods, regarding which the Chinese treatises on
Aesthetics inform us fully.
Finally, the fourth class. Plants and Insects, is based
upon the same conception as that of Flowers and Birds.
The insect is represented with the plant which is his
habitat when in the stage of caterpillar and larva, or
flying above the flowers and plants upon which he sub-
sists on reaching the stage of butterfly and insect.
Certain books add to this fourth class a subdivision
comprising fishes.
Lastly we must note that in the Far East, as in
Europe, there is a special class to be taken into con-
sideration, Religious paintings. In China, this refers
almost exclusively to Buddhist paintings.
IV. INSPIRATION
THE aesthetic conceptions of the Far East have
been deeply influenced by a special philosophy
of nature. The Chinese consider the relation of
the two principles, male and female, the yang and the
yiriy as the source of the universe. Detached from
the primordial unity, they give birth to the forms of
this world by ever varying degrees of combination.
Heaven corresponds to the male principle, earth to
the female principle. Everything upon the earth,
beings, plants, animals or man is formed by the min-
gling of yang and yin. While the mountain, enveloped
in mists, recalls the union of these two principles, the
legend of forces thus revealed by no means pauses
here. Fabulous or real, the animals and plants ha-
bitually seen in Chinese paintings express a like
conception.
The dragon is the ancestor of everything that bears
feathers or scales. He represents the element of
water, the ^^'aters of the earth, the mists of the air,
the heavenly principle. He is seen breaking through
the clouds like some monstrous apparition, unveiling
for an instant the greatness of a mystery barely dis-
cerned. The tiger is the symbol of the earthly prin-
38
s- ^^ .i f >»* i * us
ik.''f M. «t J^'T ^-(^ >-fe
PLATE V. PORTRAIT OF Lt) TUNG-PING BY T'ENC CH'ANG-YU
Tang Period. Collection of August Jaccaci. Lent to the Metropolitan
Museum, New York.
TECHNIQUE 4I
ciple, a personification of quadrupeds as distinct from
birds and reptiles. His ferocious form lurks in the
tempest. Defying the hurricane which bends the
bamboos and uproots trees, he challenges the furies
of nature that are hostile to the expression of the uni-
versal soul. The bamboo is the symbol of wisdom,
the pine is the emblem of will-power and life. The
plum tree in flower is a harmonious combination of
the two principles. It symbohzes virginal purity.
Thus is built up a complete system of allusions
similar to the allegories of our own classics but
superior in that they never degenerate into frozen
symbols, but on the contrary keep in close touch with
nature, investing her with a vibrant life, in which
human consciousness vanishes making way for the
dawning consciousness of infinitude.
Buddhism goes still further. It does not even believe
in the reality of the world. In this belief, forms are
but transitory, the universe an illusion forever flowing
into an unending future. Outside of the supreme
repose, in the six worlds of desire,^ the things that are
susceptible to pain and death pursue their evolution.
Souls travel this closed cycle under the most di-
verse forms, from hell to the gods, advancing or re-
treating, in accordance with the good deeds or errors
' These are: the worlds of animals, of man, of gods or divas,
of giants or asuras, of pretas or wandering spirits, and of hells.
Freedom from perpetual transmigration in these six worlds is
attained only through the extinction of desire.
42 CHINESE PAINTERS
committed in previous existences. A stone, a plant,
an insect, a demon, or a god are only illusory forms,
each encompassing an identical soul on its way to
deliverance, as it is caught at different stages of its
long calvary and imprisoned through original sin and
the instinctive desire for life. Whence we see emerg-
ing a new feeling of charity which embraces all beings.
Their moral character is felt to be the same as that
of man, their goal is the same, and in the vast world
of illusion each seeks to fulfill the same destiny.
Behind the changes of the universe the Buddhist
perceives the primal substance that pervades all crea-
tion. There results from this an intimacy with things
which exists in no other creed. From inert matter to
the most highly organized being, all creation is thus
endowed with a sense of kinship that is destined to
make a tender and stirring appeal in the artist's inter-
pretation of nature.
PART TWO
THE EVOLUTION OF
CHINESE PAINTING
43
I. ORIGINS
THE origins of painting in China are mingled with
the origins of writing. Written characters are,
in fact, derived from pictography or picture
writing, those in use at the present time being only
developed and conventionalized forms of primitive
drawings. The early books and dictionaries give
us definite information regarding this evolution. But
while history bears witness to this ancient connection,
w^e do not come into contact with actual evidence
until the third century of our era, through the bas-
reliefs of the Han dynasty, and in the fourth cen-
tury through the paintings of Ku K'ai-chih. Here
we find by no means the origin of an evolution but,
on the contrary, the last traces of an expiring tradi-
tion.
45
IT. BEFORE THE INTERVENTION OF
BUDDHISM
THE bas-reliefs of the Han dynasty are almost
all comprised in the sculptured stone slabs em-
bellishing mortuary chambers and of these the
artistic merit is most unequal.^ Their technique is
primitive. It consists in making the contours of
figures by cutting away the stone in grooves with
softened angles, leaving the figure in silhouette. En-
graved lines complete the drawing.
The subjects are sometimes mythical and some-
times legendary. There are representations of divini-
ties, fabulous animals, scenes of war and of the chase
and processions of people bearing tribute. At times
the great compositions display imposing spectacles, a
luxurious and refined array. Now and then at-
tempts at pictorial perspective are joined to some
unrelated scene.
All this is in direct conflict with the technique of
bas-reliefs and leads to the surmise that the models
^ These bas-reliefs have been studied by M. Chavannes in
"La sculpture sur pierre en Chine au temps des deux dynasties
Han," Paris, 1893; also in "Mission archeologique en Chine,"
Paris, 1910. Rubbings taken from the sculptured slabs are re-
produced here in full.
46
PLATE VI. PAINTING BY AN UNKNOWN ARTIST
T'ang Period. Collection of R. Petrucci.
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 49
were drawn by painters and copied with more or less
skill by makers of funeral monuments.
This impression is confirmed if certain carved slabs
are compared with a painting by Ku K'ai-chih, of
which we can judge by means of a copy made in the
Sung period.^ One of the scenes of this long scroll
leaves no possible misapprehension as to the pictorial
origin of the Han bas-reliefs. Its subject, a river
god on a chariot drawn by dragons, is similar in
composition to the models used by the artisans of the
third century.
We have, however, better testimony than a copy
made at a later period. The British Museum, in
London, is the owner of a painting attributed to
Ku K'ai-chih. The reasons impelling us to be-
lieve in its authenticity are weighty, almost indis-
putable.-* We therefore accept it here and will
endeavor to define the work of one of the greatest
painters of China in the fourth and the beginning of
the fifth century.
^ This painting formed part of the collection of the ex-viceroy
Tuan Fang, killed in 1911, during the revolution. It was pub-
lished in 1 911 by the Japanese archeologist, Mr. Taki.
^ These reasons are set forth in a work which Mr. Laurence
Binyon is preparing, to accompany a reproduction engraved by
Japanese artists for the British Museum.
* The preceding footnote refers to a work pubhshed in 191 3
by the Trustees of the British Museum, containing a reproduc-
tion of the painting in its entirety and giving a full description.
— Translator.
50 CHI NESEP A INTERS
The painted scenes are inspired by a work of the
third century containing admonitions addressed to the
ladies of the imperial palace. The striking charac-
teristics of these compositions are the lightness and
delicacy of style, the poetry of the attitudes and the
supreme elegance of the forms. Heavy black tresses
frame the ivory faces with refined and subtle charm.
The voluptuous caprice of garments in long floating
folds, the extreme perfection of the figures and the
grace of gestures make this painting a thing of unique
beauty. Only through the cultivation of centuries
could such spiritual insight be attained.
If the copy from the collection of Tuan Fang re-
calls the bas-reliefs of the Han period, the painting
in the British Museum is related to the bas-reliefs of
Long-men, which date from the seventh century and
of which M. Chavannes has published photographs.
Therefore we may say that the style of Ku K'ai-chih
exemplifies the distinctive features of Chinese paint-
ing at a period extending from the third to the seventh
centuries.^
It should also be noted that toward the end of the
fifth or the beginning of the sixth century, the painter
^ A copy of an engraving on stone of the year 1095, representing
" Confucius sitting amidst his disciples" and another representing
"Confucius walking, followed by one of his disciples," dated 1 118,
have been published by M. de Chavannes ("Mission archeolo-
gique en Chine," Nos. 869 and 871). The latter is considered as
having been undoubtedly executed after a painting by Ku K'ai-
chih.
PLATE VII. GEESE
Sung Period. British Museum, London.
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 53
and critic Hsieh Ho formulated the Six Canons ^ upon
which the far-eastern code of Aesthetics is founded.
These Canons introduce philosophical conceptions and
technical knowledge which also presuppose long cul-
tivation, for it is only after rules have been brought
to reality in a work of art that they are formulated
into a code. Therefore when Buddhism appeared
in China it found there a native art whose value
was proved beyond question by a long succession of
masterpieces. After having exhausted every mani-
festation of strength and vigor, this art had arrived
at expressions of extreme refinement and profound and
appeahng charm, closely verging on the disquieting
dreams of decadence.
^ Interpretations of the Six Canons by five authorities are
accessible in a very convenient form for comparison in Mr.
Laurence Binyon's "FHght of the Dragon," p. 12. — Translator.
III. THE INTERVENTION OF
BUDDHISM
CHINESE books state that between the fourth
and the eighth centuries '*the art of painting
man and things underwent a vital change."
By this they alluded to the intervention of Buddhist
art, which made its appearance in China toward the
fifth century in the form of the Graeco- Indian art of
Gandhara, already modified by its transit across
Eastern Turkestan. This by no means indicates that
purely Indian origins might not be found for it. At
Sanchi, as well as in Central India and at Ajanta
such characteristics are preserved. But the Greek
dynasties which had settled in northwestern India in
the train of Alexander, had carried with them the
canons of Hellenistic art. The technique and methods
of this art were placed at the service of the new re-
ligion. They gave to Buddhist art — which was
just beginning to appear in the Gandharian provinces
— its outward form, its type of figures, its range of
personages and the greater part of its ornamentation. ^
^ See Foucher, "L'Art greco-bouddique du Gandhara." Paris,
Leroux.
54
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING ^^
Buddhism found the expiring Hellenistic formula
which had been swept beyond its borders, ready at hand
at the very moment the new rehgion was gathering it-
self together for that prodigious journey which, tra-
versing the entire Far East, was to lead it to the shores
of the Pacific. Once outside of India, it came into
contact with Sassanian Persia and Bactria. With
Hellenistic influences were mingled confused elements
springing from the scattered civilizations which had
reigned over the Near East. Thence it spread to the
byways of Eastern Turkestan.
We know today, thanks to excavations of the Ger-
man expeditions of Griinwedel and von Lecoq, the
two Enghsh expeditions of Sir Aurel Stein and the
French expedition of M. Pelliot, that in that long
chain of oases filled with busy cities, Buddhist art
was gradually formed into the likeness under which
it was to appear as a finished product in the Far
East. Here it developed magnificently. The enormous
frescoes of Murtuq display imposing arrangements
of those figures of Buddhas and Bodhisatvas which
were to remain unchanged in the plastic formulas of
China and Japan. Meanwhile conflicting influences
continued to be felt. Sometimes the Indian types
prevailed, as at Khotan, at others there were Sem-
itic types and elements originating in Asia Minor,
such as were found at Miran, and at length, as at
Tun-huang, types that were almost entirely Chinese
appeared.
56 CHINESE PAINTERS
The paintings brought from Tun-huang by the
Stein and Pclliot expeditions enable us to realize the
nature of the characteristics which contact with
China imposed upon Buddhist art. It had no
choice but to combine with the tendencies revealed in
the painting of Ku K'ai-chih. The painter trained in
the school of Hellenistic technique drew with the brush.
He delighted in the rhythmic movement of the line
and the display of a transcendent harmony and ele-
gance of proportion such as are seen in the frescoes of
Eastern Turkestan. Perhaps through contact with
China — herself searching for new^ expressions — but
probably through a combination of the two influences,
Buddhist painting, at the opening of the T'ang
dynasty, gives us heavier types in which compact and
powerful figures take on a new character.
From then on we perceive the nature of the
great change to which the early books refer. Chinese
painting had already known the genii and fairies of
Taoism, the Rishi or wizards living in mountain soli-
tudes, the Immortals dwelling in distant isles beyond
the sea. It now knew gods wrapped in the ecstatic
contemplation of Nirvana, with smiling mouth and
half-closed eyes, revealing mystic symbols in a broad
and apostolic gesture. It had more life-like figures,
attendants, benign and malignant, terrifying demons.
Before these impassive gods, in a fervor of devotion
it bent the figures of donors, men and women, some-
times veritable portraits. With even greater breadth
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 57
it portrayed the disciples of Sakyamuni, those ancho-
rites and hermits who under the name of Lohan ^ have
entered into Chinese Buddhist legend. Indian priests
with harsh, strongly marked features and wrinkled
faces, preachers of a foreign race, disfigured by scourg-
ing or else the calm full visage of the ecstatic in
contemplation, — such are the types that appeared.
Chinese painters took up the new subjects and treated
them with a freedom, an ease, and a vitality which
at once added an admirable chapter to the history of
art.
^ Indian Arhat; Japanese Rakan. — Translator
IV. THE T'ANC PERIOD - SEVENTH TO
TENTH CENTURIES
THE T'ang dynasty was the really vital period of
Chinese Buddhism. Among the painters who
gave it its highest expression Wu Tao-tzii holds
first place. His memory dwells in history as that of
one of the greatest masters in China and legend has
still further enhanced the might of his genius. It is
highly probable that his work is entirely destroyed,
but by the aid of copies, incised stones and wood
engravings of the twelfth century, an idea of the
painter's conception can be formed. He seems to
have been the creator of a Chinese type of Kwanyin, the
Buddhist incarnation of mercy and charity. Drapery
covers the high drawn hair. She is attired in the har-
monious folds of a plain and ample garment and ex-
presses supreme authority, the sublimity of divine love.
If to these fragments of an immense plastic pro-
duction is added the analysis furnished by the written
records, we can define with some degree of certitude
the place occupied by Wu Tao-tzu in the history of
Chinese painting. The books state that the lines
from his brush fairly vibrated; all united in marvel-
ling at the spirituality emanating from forms thus
58
PLATE VIII. WHITE EAGLE. SUNG PERIOD
Collection of R. Petrucci.
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 6l
defined. He adhered almost exclusively to the use
of powerful ink-lines and denied himself the use of any
color, whether scattered or prominent, which would
have robbed his painting of the austerity which was
the source of its surpassing feeling. But in order to
appreciate the full value of the new ideas introduced
by Wu into Chinese painting, it is necessary to under-
stand the exact nature of the technique that was in
practice up to the seventh and eighth centuries, at the
opening of the T'ang dynasty.
At that time there prevailed the analytic, pains-
taking, detailed and very considered drawing that
is common to all periods preceding great construc-
tive work. This technique admitted the use of two
fundamental methods: one called double contour, the
other contour or single contour. The method of double
contour was applied chiefly to the drawing of plant
life in landscape. It consisted in outlining leaves or
branches by means of two lines of ink placed in ap-
position. The space thus enclosed was filled with
color. Any peculiarities of formation, knots in wood
and veins in leaves were added subsequently. The
name of single contour was applied to drawings wherein
a single ink line outlined the object, the space
enclosed being then filled with color.
If the application of these analytic methods was
sometimes carried to the extreme of delicacy it never
became labored. Throughout its entire evolution
the art of the T'ang period is characterized by a
62 CHINESE PAINTERS
sense of the magnificent. Once the study of forms was
exhausted, this type of work was bound to be super-
ceded. Wu Tao-tzii profited by the work of his pred-
ecessors. Combining in a single stroke of the brush,
vigor and an eclectic character of line, with values
and fluidity of tone, he brought to a supreme unity
the two great principles by which things are made
manifest in all the magic of their essential structure.
But it must be understood that this patient investiga-
tion of forms was not hmited to preparing the way
for a single master. The logical outcome was an in-
dependent movement to which the origin of modern
Chinese painting can be traced.
"Painting has two branches," the books say, "that
of the North and that of the South; the separation
occurred in the T'ang period." These terms Northern
School and Southern School must not be taken literally.
They serve merely to characterize styles which, in the
eighth century, liberated themselves from methods
demanding such close study and exact definition of
forms. The style of the Northern School is strong,
vehement and bold; the style of the Southern School
is melancholy and dreamy. The ideal of Northern
China, impregnated with barbarian elements, is brought
into contrast with that of Southern China, heir to an al-
ready ancient civilization, and under the spell of Taoist
legends and the bewildered dreams of its philosophers.^
^ These divisions of Northern and Southern Schools do not
correspond, as might be imagined, to geographical hmitations.
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 65
Li Ssu-hsun and his son Li Chao-tao (eighth cen-
tury) are considered to be the founders of the North-
ern School. The paintings attributed to them show
the character which the Northern style preserved up
to the Ming period and which was to be emphasized
to the point of brutahty at the hands of certain
masters in the Yiian period. At the outset, in its
brilliancy and precision, the Northern style held to a
certain refinement of line; later the line is drawn
with a firm and powerful brush and strong colors are
applied almost pure.
In direct contrast the Southern stjde is made up of
half-tints, with a feeling of reserve and intentional
restraint, which gives it, with equal power, at times a
more appealing charm. The lines are pliant, im-
mersed in shading, color is suggested in a subtle
fashion and, in contrast to the almost brutal emphasis
of the North, it finds expression in chiaroscuro and
concealed harmonies.
The foundation of the Southern School is attributed
to a great landscape painter of the eighth century,
Wang Wei. Nothing could better determine his ten-
dencies than monochrome ^ painting in Chinese ink. Ac-
Painters of the South worked in the style of the North and
painters of the North likewise used the Southern style. Moreover
the same master was able to employ one or the other according
to the inspiration of the moment. Tiiese works were produced
for a receptive people capable of understanding both styles.
' "Monochrome is a starved and lifeless term to express the
marvellous range and subtlety of tones of which the preparation
66 CHINESE PAINTERS
cording to the records, this was first practiced by him.
It constitutes what in China, as well as in Japan, is
called the literary man's painting and is, in reality,
quite closely related to calligraphy. The variety of
shadings and relative colors of objects depend entirely
upon the tones of ink washes. Wang Wei seems to
have treated monochrome mainly from the stand-
point of chiaroscuro, in his search for an atmospheric
perspective which should be both fluid and ethereal.
It appears that the accentuation of lines according to
rule that is seen later on, where forms are synthetized
— sometimes to an excessive degree — was only a
derivation of the work of Wang Wei and caused by
the intrusion of calligraphic virtuosity into the domain
of painting.
When we arrive at Wang Wei, landscape is treated
as a special subject and with its own resources. It
was he who discovered the principles which govern
the fading of colors and forms in the distance,
and who formulated the laws of atmospheric perspec-
tive. Paintings in his style are all executed in a pre-
dominating color which the Chinese call luo-ts'ing, a
mineral color of varying shades ranging from a mala-
chite green to a lapis-lazuli blue. It will be seen why
luo-ts^ing gave its name to the style of Wang
Wei.
By means of bluish tints he painted the distant
of black soot known as Chinese ink is capable." Laurence Bin-
yon in "The Flight of the Dragon." — Translator.
-id^'.
i
PLATE X. LANDSCAPE IN THE ST\XE OF HSIA KUEI
Sung Period. Collection of Martin White.
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 69
expanse of landscape. Mountains forming screens in
the backgrounds and masses of trees lost in the dis-
tance, are all indicated by the azure tints which inter-
vening layers of air give to remote objects. But
as the foreground is approached, rightful colors be-
gin to prevail and the azure tints are subtly graded,
passing into a fresh and brilliant green amongst
wooded declivities, and into the natural hue in the
foliage of trees. Often heavy mists, spreading at the
foot of high mountains, veil the outlines and still
further emphasize the feeling of limitless space.'
But when a master has carried his study of the
fading of colors and of their relative values thus far,
he must have considered not only the element of color
itself, but also the collective tones which color is
capable of expressing. From this to monochrome
painting in Chinese ink is but a step; historical tes-
timony shows that Wang Wei took this step. By
the simple opposition of black and white, and through
tone values and gradations of shades, he endeavored
to create the same feeling of atmosphere and space
which he had been able to express with luo-ts'ing. No
original picture remains to inform us to what extent
^ I have not seen nor do I know of any paintings which can
be said with certainty to be from the hand of Wang Wei. But
from the records as well as from works directly inspired by him,
an idea of his style and technique can be formed. Ancient paint-
ings in luo-ts'ing are found in Japan as well as in China. The
British Museum of London has a scroll painted by Chao Meng-fu,
in the manner of Wang Wei, dated 1309.
70 CHINESE PAINTERS
he succeeded, but by means of monochrome paintings
of the Sung period which owe their inspiration to
him, the importance of the reform accomplished, and
the tendencies manifested in those lost works of art
may be divined.
Another master whose work can be defined with
sufficient accuracy to cite as an illustration of a dif-
ferent aspect of the history of painting during the
T'ang period, is Han Kan, who lived in the middle
of the eighth century and who is celebrated as a
painter of horses.
The sculptured stones of the Han dynasty, espe-
cially the admirable bas-reliefs of the tomb of Chao-
ling, representing the favorite coursers of the emperor
T'ai-tsung, show the manner in which artists, from the
third to the seventh centuries, were capable of study-
ing and dehneating the postures of the horse. It
is therefore not surprising to find a great animal
painter in the eighth century. Beyond question he
was not the first. The written records have preserved
the names of several of his predecessors and while the
honor of having been the great founder of a school
was attributed to him, it is possible that this refers
only to an artistic movement bearing his name, of
which he was not the sole representative.
But the work of Han Kan and the unknown
artists grouped around him, proclaims a powerful
tradition, a well grounded school of animal painters
which had attained the highest eminence. It was
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 7I
destined to exert a strong influence upon painters of
horses in the Yiian epoch and even when, later on,
this great tradition is seen disappearing, cloying and
insipid, amidst the mannerisms of the Ming period, it
will still retain sufficient power to carry thus far a
reflection of the vigor and vitahty attained in the
great periods.
The painting of Flowers and Birds, and Plants and
Insects appears to have been already estabhshed at
this time. The flowers and plants are drawn accord-
ing to the methods of double contour and single contour,
worked over and brought out with that intensity of
analysis to which aHusion has been made. The bird
is caught in its most subtle movement, the insect
studied in its essential structure.
Thus we see that Chinese painting had extended
its investigations in every direction and had solved the
problems found along its path. It had absorbed foreign
influences, altered its conception of the divine and
found a new type of figure. It had endowed landscape
painting with all the resources of atmospheric perspec-
tive and had established the two essential styles of
the North and the South. The painter was master of
the visible; his thought dominated form and was able
to express itself with freedom.
V. THE SUNG PERIOD — TENTH TO
THIRTEENTH CENTURIES
THE T'ang period had been the golden age of
Chinese poetry. It had witnessed an extraor-
dinary outburst of rehgious fervor, and the over-
whelming domination of Buddhism. It had, moreover,
triumphantly re-estabhshed the unity of the empire
and to the pride of intellectual activity it could add
the pride of might and dominion. But the same can-
not be said for the Sung period. From a political
standpoint its history is one of cumulative disaster.
Ancient China retreated by degrees before the thrusts
of the barbarians, until the great thunderbolt of Genghis
Khan's conquest, reverberating with formidable echoes
throughout all Asia, announced the approaching down-
fall of culture in the red dawn of a new era.
The Sung culture, totally different from that of the
T'ang period, was, however, swept forward to its cul-
mination. It would seem as if, under the menace of
the barbarians, the mind had set for its goal the de-
velopment of ideas embryonic in earlier work, formu-
lating them in haste and arresting them finally in
perfect yet sad images, in which the heights attained
were haunted by the shadow of impending ruin.
72
PLATE XI. LANDSCAPE BY MA LIN
Sung Period. Collection of R. Petrucci.
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 75
The dynasty opened with a classical reaction against
new ideas and witnessed a return to Confucian philoso-
phy, with its conception of the State. But centuries
of history had not rolled by without effect. In the
tenth and eleventh centuries the ancient writings were
no longer understood with their original meaning. A
w^hole series of philosophers, of whom the last is Chu
Hsi (thirteenth century), had formulated a composite
doctrine resulting in what might be called an official
philosophy, which has dominated to the present day.
Some bold spirits, however, opposed this reactionary
codification, struggling in vain to give a positive and
firm structure to the doomed empire. Their influence
appears to have been considerable. Just as the old
heterodox philosophy was being stifled by the dry
and colorless metaphysics of the conservatives, it
was awakened to new life by the painters, who gave
it a stirring interpretation in their work.
The period of technical research was past. At first,
with care and patience, forms had been determined
by drawing. Color had remained a thing apart, re-
garded as a work of illumination and quite distinct
from drawing. Then study was extended still further.
Color came to be viewed in the light of shades and
tones and became one of the means for the expression
of form; it became the very drawing itself, — that
which reveals the basic structure.
Wang Wei represents the moment when art, eman-
cipating itself from problems already solved, had
76 CHINESE PAINTERS
conquered every medium of expression. Such is the
tradition which he bequeathed to the Sung artists, who
were destined to add thereto such supreme master-
pieces.
The Sung painters were haunted by the old philo-
sophical beliefs as to the formation of the universe.
Beyond the actual surroundings they dimly perceived
a magic world made up of perfect forms. Appearances
were but the visible covering of the two great princi-
ples whose combination engendered life. They believed
that, in painting, they did more than to reproduce the
external form of things. They labored with the convic-
tion that they were wresting the soul from objects, in
order to transfer it to the painted silk. Thus they
created something new, an imaginary world more
beautiful than the real world, wherein the intimate
relation of beings and things was disclosed, — a
world pervaded by pure spirit and one which was re-
vealed only to those whose thought was sufficiently
enlightened, and whose sympathies were sufficiently
broad, to understand and to be stirred.
The painters of the line of Wang Wei during the
Sung period, devoted themselves chiefly to the
development of painting in monochrome. They pur-
sued the study of relations of tones and values of
shading up to the limit of extreme delicacy, and if they
mingled color at all with their subtle evocations, it was
with a feeling of unequalled restraint. They dwelt
for the most part in intimacy with Nature. Flee-
PLATE XII. MONGOL HORSEMAN RETURNING FROM THE
HUNT
By Chao Meng-fu. Yiian Period. Doucet Collection.
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 79
ing from the cares of court and city, they retired
into mountain solitudes, meditating for long periods
before taking up the brush to paint. Thus they por-
trayed those mountains enveloped in mists, wherein
was revealed the harmony of the two principles which
control the universe. From the depths of valleys
misty vapors arose and cedars and gigantic pines
reared their majestic forms, while, on the threshold
of a thatched cabin upon some rocky plateau, a her-
mit deep in meditation contemplated the vast expanse
of a landscape of august grandeur.
Sometimes, turning to plant forms, they painted
the bamboo in black and white. A single masterly
stroke sufficed to draw the cylindrical stalk from one
joint to another, or the pointed leaves which are so
quivering with life that we seem to hear the plaintive
voice of the wind "combed," as the Chinese writings
express it, "by the reeds.'* Or again, when a flower
was the subject, they suggested it with a simplicity
that presupposes a scientifically exact study of forms.
It was by no means the splendid image which they
sought to grasp but the soul itself; at one time the
flower barely open in all its enchanting freshness, at
another the softened petals drooping in languid fashion,
revealing a splendor still present but soon to fade;
at times the dew moistening the leaves, the snow
shrouding them with its purity, or the slow monotonous
rain beneath which they drip, motionless. These
paintings are always instinct with deep poetic feeling.
80 CHINESE PAINTERS
At the hands of the Sung painters the school
of landscape and monochrome technique attained a
level which will never be exceeded. The masters of
this period are numerous and are frequently repre-
sented by works of almost certain authenticity. It
seems useless to assemble here names which will
convey no meaning to the European reader. It will
suffice to illustrate by a few great figures the three
centuries of history during which Chinese landscape
painting reached its culminating point.
Tung Yiian and Chii Jan are considered by the
critics as having founded a special school in the great
tradition of Wang Wei. Their paintings were quiet
in coloring and were executed with broad strokes in
an impressionist style. These works must be viewed
from a distance to see their apparent violence merge
into extreme elegance. They furnish a complete
demonstration of the laws of atmospheric perspective,
with its feeling of distance and infinite space, in
which forms are immersed. Here we find evidence
that these painters were the first to attempt the
arrangement of lines according to rule, which led
ultimately to calligraphic painting.
Among the heads of schools cited in the Chinese
writings Ma Yiian and Hsia Kuei of the Sung dynasty
must be placed in a class by themselves. Both of
these masters lived at the end of the twelfth and the
beginning of the thirteenth centuries. Their style
can be described with accuracy since original examples
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 8l
are extant — both by themselves and by their dis-
ciples — in which their characteristics are fully re-
vealed.
Ma Yiian is classed with the Southern School by
reason of his restraint in the use of color, his great-
ness of conception and his technical treatment of
forms. But he brings to his work a virility in which the
influence of the Northern School is plainly discerned.
He has a broad stroke and a masterful manner
which place his works in the front rank of all Chinese
painting. His mountainous backgrounds rear them-
selves with fierce energy. His old pines, with branches
wreathed in vines, would suffice alone to define his
style, so freely do they express the force of plant life
and the proud defiance of the aged tree. He loved
the mountain solitudes to which he gave a new
imagery, so authoritative and so perfect that it served
to create a school.
The influence of Ma Yiian was felt by his brother
and by his son. Ma Lin. Although the death of the
latter occurred under the Mongolian dynasty, he was an
exponent of Sung art. The fierce energy of the old
master gives way to a somewhat more melancholy
and gentle quality in his son. There is the same re-
straint in the handling of the brush, the same reserve
in the use of color, but the landscape stretches out
into deep and dreamy vistas that are indescribably
poetic. The melancholy of autumn, the sadness of
flights of birds that circle in the evening light, the
82 CHINESE PAINTERS
feeling of seclusion and silence, such are the things
in which this poetic spirit finds its joy, true heir of
the master mind whose genius found expression in the
wild aspects of nature.
The school of Ma dominated the entire subsequent
period and his influence extended as far as Korea,
where traces of it were still to be found as late as the
fifteenth century. As the history of Korean painting
becomes better known, we shall be able to say with
more accuracy what it owes to other Chinese mastfers;
but in so far as those mentioned are concerned, their
influence appears to have been sufficiently strong to
impress a certain type on fragmentary works from
Korea which have become known to us recently.
We are far from being as well informed regard-
ing Hsia Kuei, but we have that which is worth
more than written records, a few paintings preserved
in Japanese collections, which it seems legitimate to
attribute to him without reservation. It is readily
seen why his name is always linked with that of Ma
Yiian. His work shows the same energy and power
and discloses an ideal which is similar to that of his
confrere. He seems to have penetrated even further
than Ma Yiian along the path of daring simplifi-
cations, and to have approached at times the calli-
graphic style. He painted both landscape and figures
and was skilled in obtaining strange eff'ects, as if of
color, through his use of monochrome.
Another painter whose name dominates the history
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 83
of this time and whose work serves to characterize a
special aspect is Li Lung-mien. It is naturally difficult
to prove that all the works attributed to him are
authentic. However, collections in Japanese temples
or privately owned, possess paintings which passed as
his at a very early date and in which at least we
can recognize his style. In reviewing the centuries of
history, it is interesting to note that the work of Li
Lung-mien is not without similarity, in certain of its
elements, to the paintings of Ku K'ai-chih. His line
is delicate and flexible and he draws his outlines with
the same subtlety, the same grace and the same instinct
for harmonious curves and an extraordinary rhythm.
The tradition which arose in a period antedating
the T'ang epoch was therefore still unbroken in the
Sung period, and I am sure that proofs of this will
increase in number as our information becomes more
accurate. New evidence furnished by the paintings
found at Tun-huang and certain frescoes at Murtuq
has recently shown that the type of Buddhist hermit
— the Lohan meditating in solitude — whose inception
had, until these discoveries, been attributed to Li Lung-
mien, in reality dated much further back and originated
in the Buddhist art of Eastern Turkestan, perhaps even
in India. From those regions are derived the mag-
nificent subjects of which Li Lung-mien made use to
express meditation. Sometimes there are emaciated
faces, withered bodies with protruding tendons that
outline deep hollows, and again rotund and peaceful
84 CHINESE PAINTERS
figures meditating in tranquil seclusion. From the
written records as well as in his works, there is every
evidence that he was one of those who revived Buddhist
painting. No matter what models he chose to follow,
he always gave them a stress and a peculiar distinction,
while from the standpoint of pure art he had the
ability to portray them with finished elegance and
majestic dignity.
Li Lung-mien was not content to paint Buddhist
figures only. He painted landscape also, and in his
youth he had painted horses. A great critic of the
Sung period said of him that '*his soul entered into
communion with all things, his spirit penetrated the
mysteries and the secrets of nature." This critic
added that one day he saw Li Lung-mien painting a
Buddhist divinity. The words of the god fairly leapt
from the lines; it seemed as if the brush of the master
summoned them one by one into being. Like all the
masters of his time, Li Lung-mien sought to free the
spirit from its outward semblance. Beyond the ma-
terial, he perceived the immaterial force which ani-
mates the world. As a landscape painter his conception
of Nature was broad and majestic. His graceful and
harmonious line recalls the happiest moments in the
history of plastic art, and he challenges comparison
with a facile genius like Raphael. But he includes the
whole realm of nature in his subjects, and in his work
we find traces, expressed with greater breadth, but
with quite as keen an insight, of an ancient and
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Yiian Period. Collection of R. Petrucci.
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 87
noble art, such as was found almost extinct in the
work of Ku K'ai-chih.
We cannot leave the Sung painters without devoting
some attention to Mi Fei and his son. The two Mi's,
indeed, accomplished a far-reaching reform in Chinese
technique; they enriched painting with a new imagery
and founded a school which, like that of Ma, exerted
an influence on later periods and was strongly felt in
Korea.
In addition to being a great painter. Mi Fei was a
great calligraphist. This is apparent however little
one may have seen of work in his style. He possesses
in the highest degree what the Chinese describe as
the ** handling of flowing ink." He used the tech-
nique of monochrome almost exclusively, and so
closely related tone values to the line, or rather to
the brush-stroke, that it is difficult to decide whether
he paints rather than draws, or draws rather than
paints. Properly speaking, he does not employ the line
at all but works by masses, by broad, heavily inked
touches, without pausing to emphasize the deep warm
blacks provided by Chinese ink. His manner recalls
certain drawings by Rembrandt, also produced by
strong inking, which evoke a strange and magical
effect of light. Such w^as the spirit in which Mi Fei
treated landscape. This technique marks his style
and gives it an individuality that is indisputable. The
vehemence with which he attacks forms, the rapidity of
his brush-stroke, the way in which things spring from
88 CHINESE PAINTERS
such energy, call to mind pictures by European masters,
painted in full color, and it may be said of the paint-
ings of Mi Fei that they are fairly colored by their
tremendous vitality, if the quality of the materials he
employed permits the use of such a term. Therefore
Mi Fei and his son are responsible for a new technique,
a strongly individual work, and the creation of a style
which marks the highest achievement in monochrome.
The trend which impelled them was, however, general.
Carried to its extreme it led to the style of painting
called calligraphic, of which there has been occasion
to speak several times.
Calligraphic painting, or the literary style, has its
origin in the studies of Wang Wei when, renouncing
the aid of colour, he strove by harmony of shading
and by tone values, to reproduce the vast reaches of
space and all the shifting subtlety of atmospheric per-
spective. The exclusive use of Chinese ink necessi-
tated special studies since thus calligraphy was directly
approached. The different styles of writing are almost
drawing in themselves. Each style of writing has its
own rules for dissecting the written character and
making the stroke. Now, as is known, the Chinese
painters attached supreme importance to the line and
to the brush-stroke. This was due in part to their
equipment and in part to the fact that the amateurs
of art were prepared by their classical studies to ap-
preciate the strength or the delicacy of a line judged
for itself, quite independently of the forms represented.
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 89
We must also bear in mind that all of the Chinese
painters were scholars, belonging to the class of the
literati.^ Writers, poets, statesmen, soldiers, Buddhist
or Taoist priests, and philosophers have all furnished
the greatest names in art. Under such conditions
the technical relationship between the line of the
painter and that of the caHigraphist was closer, since
painter and caHigraphist were frequently united in one
and the same person. Thence came the early tendency
to use monochrome and to represent forms in the
abstract, rendering them more and more as mere
themes, thus reducing the subject to a few simple
calhgraphic strokes.
It is difficult for a European to follow the thought
of the Chinese painters in these daring simplifications.
Sometimes they are carried to such an extreme
as to leave us with a feehng of perplexity. Often
however they give rise to mighty conceptions and
^ The literati, or lettered class, were the aristocracy in what
was the most democratic of absolute monarchies. No matter how
humble his origin, anyone of the male sex was eligible to com-
pete in the examinations which were based upon literary knowl-
edge and memory of the classics. Proficiency in handwriting
was a natural resuh. The successful candidate might aspire to
any post in the empire, as official positions were bestowed
through hterary merit. During three days and two nights at
the time of examination the candidate was not allowed to leave
his tiny box-like cell, lacking even space to lie down. Cases of
death during the examinations were not infrequent. The exami-
nation halls in Peking are now destroyed and those in Nanking.
with 20,000 cells are crumbling away. — Translator.
90 CHINESE PAINT ERS
paintings whose essential character impresses us as
a unique product of genius. Calhgraphic painting
reached its highest level during the Sung and Yiian
periods. It was so closely allied to painting that the
Emperor Hui Tsung, who ascended the throne in
II 00, founded the Imperial Academy of Calligraphy
and Painting in the first year of his reign. Hui Tsung
was himself a painter. The books credit him with
especial mastery in the representation of birds of
prey, eagles, falcons and hawks, which seems to be
sufficient reason for deliberately attributing to him
every painting of a bird of prey, even when there is
evidence that it was painted two or three centuries
later than his time. Perhaps before long we shall
find authentic paintings by Hui Tsung. A painting
belonging to the Musee Guimet, which comes from the
collection of Tuan Fang, is the one which by its anno-
tations bears the greatest guaranty of authenticity,
but it is a representation of a figure painting of the
T'ang dynasty and gives us no information as to the
manner in which Hui Tsung painted eagles. However,
certain paintings from his collections have come down
to us. Whether or not by the imperial hand they
proclaim a virile art, an instinct for the grandiose and
a majestic character which are the qualities of which
the eagle is a symbol.
The foundation of the Academy of Calligraphy and
Painting had results quite other than those hoped for
by its founder. It became imbued with the evils of
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 9I
formalism. It was established in the imperial capital
in court surroundings, in other words, in an atmosphere
from which true artists depart with all possible speed.
It suffered inevitably through the influences of a taste,
refined it is true, but which already incKned toward
mannerisms and preciosity. Conventions were estab-
lished, subjects became stereotyped, the taste for
brifliant colors developed and, even before the end of
the Sung period, there was a marked division be-
tween academic and national art. Pedantry and
affectation began to take the place of boldness and
strength.
Doubtless this tendency would have developed still
further but for a series of disasters and the menace of
a new dynasty looming on the horizon of Central Asia,
which was already resounding with the clash of Mongol
arms.
VI. THE YUAN PERIOD — THIRTEENTH
AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES
FROM the standpoint of civilization the Mongohan
dynasty of Yiian brought nothing to China.
On the contrary, the foreign elements were
absorbed by the ancient culture for, in the final sum-
ming-up, the mind will ahvays be stronger than
weapons. From the standpoint of painting, however,
this period has marked individuahty.
The Sung period had been distinctly dominated by
the ideals of Southern China. Philosophical inspira-
tion had proven too strong to permit the style of the
Northern School to assert absolute sway. In this
we must make an exception of Buddhist painting,
which, — save in the work of a few chance painters
of religious subjects — continues the traditions of
the T'ang period, preserving the original character of
its coloring. It is true that there were masterpieces
to the credit of the Northern School but it had by
no means kept to the style of vivid illumination which
marked its inception.^ It had yielded to the influence
* It should be borne in mind that the author uses the term
illumination in the sense of color applied within a distinct and
limiting outline. This is illustrated in the definitions of single
and double contour. — Translator.
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of the Southern style, was simplified by this con-
tact and took on the austerity and proportion of the
South. It would seem as if the painters hastened to
add their testimony before the philosophy of the
ancient sages should disappear. They strove to give
the w^orld perfect images in which the great principles
of the universe could be felt vibrating. The only
suitable medium for such expression was the tech-
nique of the Southern School which they followed
with more or less fidelity.
Southern China was at that time the scene of
awakened faculties. Shaken to its foundations by the
mystic movement — both Taoist and Buddhist — of
the T'ang period, the Confucian doctrine had lost
ground but had not yet congealed into the rigid official
code of a Chu Hsi. While heterodox beliefs still
prevailed, all were free to borrow their prophetic and
poetic meaning.
When the Mongols came into power, they only
carried to completion the work of conservation be-
gun by the Sung emperors. In their contact with
China they resembled timid pupils quite as much
as conquerors. Once emperor of China, the Mongol
Kublai Khan could not but remember his purely
Chinese education. Moreover it was quite the Tartar
custom to extend their conquests to administrative
organization, by establishing a hierarchy of func-
tionaries. The conception of a supreme and auto-
cratic State, paternal in its absolutism, interven-
96 CHINESE PAINTERS
ing even to the details of private life in order to
assure the happiness of the people, — this idea, dear
to the literary conservators of the Confucian School
during the Sung period, was also too similar to the
Tartar ideal to be denied immediate adoption. Heter-
odox doctrines were formally banished from schools.
Rejected with scorn as being corrupt and dangerous,
there remained of these doctrines only such residuum
as might be found in the independent thought of
artists, who were more difficult to control. The mag-
nificent movement of the Sung period began to abate;
it produced its last master pieces and gradually waned,
until under Ming rule it was to die out completely.
The Yiian epoch, therefore, appears in the light
of a transition period connecting the fifteenth century
of Ming with the thirteenth century of Sung. From
the point of view which interests us, it did nothing but
complete a w^ork which had been carried on with
energy and success by adherents in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. It strove to reduce China to a
severely regulated State in which all great movements
and impulses should be under strict control. It suc-
ceeded. It succeeded so well, indeed, that the Euro-
peans who came to know China in the seventeenth
century and who rediscovered it so unnecessarily in the
nineteenth century, believed it to have been motionless
for two thousand years. There is no need to lay stress
here upon the absurdity of this prevalent opinion. It
has been seen in the past and will be seen in modern
PLATE XV. PAINTINGS OF THE YUAN OR EARLY MING PERIOD
Style of the Northern School. Collection of R. Petrucci.
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 99
times, that the inner travail, the evolution and the
diversity are by no means arrested. Like the nations
of Europe, China has had its evolution; the causes
were analagous, its destiny the same. This is espe-
cially felt in the history of its painting. When the
potent inspiration of the Southern School began to
wane, the style of the North took the upper hand for
obvious reasons.
Partially civilized barbarians occupied the highest
places in the State. They were the controlhng party
at the imperial court and had usurped the place of the
old society, refined, subtle and perhaps too studied,
which formed the environment of the last Sung em-
perors. Despite their naive efforts and good will,
these barbarians could not fathom an art so austere,
enlightened and balanced. They were utterly igno-
rant of such a masterly conception of nature as was
evoked in Chinese painting. Monochrome to them
was dull. They could admire on trust, but they could
not understand. On the other hand, the Northern
style with its bold assurance, strong coloring and draw-
ing positive almost to the point of seeming sculptural,
was more akin to their mental outlook. There at
least they found something which recalled those rugs
on which they appear to have exhausted their artistic
resources. In a word, they were more accustomed
to the Northern style and had brought with them
from the Northern regions their own artists, both
Chinese and barbarian.
100 CHINESE PAINTERS
The Northern temperament, reflective, strong and
positive, now began to assume mastery over the be-
wildered reveries of the Southern nature. Things are
seen to change. Even the masters who continue
the Sung tradition infuse a somewhat more robust
quahty into their works, but, in so doing, they lose
a certain stirring depth which gave the work of their
predecessors such an exceptional character. Caught
between these two tendencies, Yiian painting takes
on new traits, which are perhaps more accessible to
European mentality because they are more simple
and direct. These observations apply to the general
evolution of Chinese painting from the end of the
thirteenth to the end of the fourteenth centuries.
We must now consider it more in detail, citing by way
of illustration a few of the painters who expressed
the spirit of the time.
At its inception the Yiian dynasty had inherited the
last masters of the Sung period, among them two artists
who are recognized as of the first rank. Chao Meng-fu
— known also under the appellation of Tzu-ang — ■
was born in 1254. He was a descendant of the first
Sung emperor and held an hereditary post which he
resigned at the time the Yiian dynasty came into
power. He retired into private hfe until 1286, then
when called back to court as a high functionary, he
became a supporter of the new dynasty. Chao
Meng-fu painted landscape as well as figures, flowers
and the bamboo, but he is most celebrated for his
m
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING IO3
horses. Numberless paintings of horses are attributed
to this master; needless to say the great majority of
these are not by his hand.
As a landscape painter he seems to have worked in
the style of the Southern School, with a fine, sim-
ple line in which may still be seen traces of the
ancient tradition that extends back to Ku K'ai-chih.
This characteristic line is found in the paintings
of men and horses where the hand of Chao Meng-fu
is distinguishable. He bequeaths it to the large
school which he founded, and, through his pupils,
it becomes the inheritance of his imitators in the
Ming period. It is more than probable that almost
all of the paintings by his pupils, bearing the signa-
ture Tzu-ang, are attributed to the master, while his
own paintings are ascribed to Han Kan, painter of
horses in the T'ang period. However, among the
numerous works attributed to Chao Meng-fu, there
are a few in which we recognize the vibrant and
flexible line which is seen in his landscapes. These
paintings bear the signature of Tzu-ang, in all prob-
abihty a false one, but the work of art itself will
always be of greater value in determining its authen-
ticity than the most impressive of inscriptions. If the
technique and the quahty of the line are sufficiently
similar to warrant attributing to the same hand the
landscape in the British Museum, and any particular
painting of horses, this may be regarded as sufficient
evidence on which to base our own opinion as to his style.
1 04 CHINESE PAINTERS
Amongst his grooms and mounted soldiers, Chao
Aleng-fu painted the different races which the wave
of Mongolian invasion had swept into China: Chinese
from the central provinces, Tartars, Mongols with fur
caps, Moslems of a Semitic type from Turkestan,
with white turbans and heavy earrings. Whether his
subject was the little Tartar horse from the Mongolian
plains or the beautiful steeds of ancient Transoxiana,
ahvays brought as tribute by way of Khotan to the
Chinese court, he gave the life of the horse a singular
beauty, portraying him in an equally happy manner
whether in the act of racing or in the attitudes of
repose. In his mind still dwelt the vision of Sung
ideals, which proclaimed the hidden soul of things
and valued spirituality and life in a painting. Al-
though we see marked evidence of the Southern style
in his work, his paintings are more strongly colored
than are those of that school. The influence of the
Yiian period begins to make itself felt. It brings
out values in colored pigment, emphasizes its violence
and paves the way for a new tradition.
Chao Meng-fu has been compared by Chinese
critics to his great predecessor Han Kan. The writ-
ings, however, are unanimous in stating that, notwith-
standing his undeniable mastery, he lacked something
of the vigor of the earlier master. When we attempt
to compare the two styles through the aid of paintings
of the T'ang period, wherein a reflection of the great
animal painter may be sought, the writings appear
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EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING IO7
to be confirmed in attributing a more positive and
forceful character to the work of Han Kan or the
unknown group of painters around him. But Chao
Mcng-fu seems to have possessed in a higher degree
the feeling of movement and life, and to have been
less hampered in his choice of poses. Centuries of
study and of observation had intervened between the
great animal painter of the T'ang epoch and his
worthy rival of a later period.
Like Chao Meng-fu, Ch'ien Hsiian, or Ch'ien
Shun-chii, retired from public life at the downfall of
the Sung dynasty. He was a member of a group of
the faithful over which Chao presided, but, more
decided than the latter in his opposition to the new
dynasty, he was indignant at his confrere's defec-
tion and refused to follow his example. He lived in
retirement, devoting himself to painting and to poetry
up to the time of his death. He also continued the
Sung tradition under the Yiian dynasty to which, as
a matter of fact, he belonged only during the second
part of his life. He painted figures, landscape, flowers
and birds. His delicate line is not lacking in strength,
and he seems to have been especially endowed with
a sense of form which approached greatness in its
simplicity. Whether the subject is a young prince or
a pigeon perched on the summit of a rock from which
chrysanthemums are springing, the same dignified
and tranquil nobility is asserted with ease. He still
used the quiet and restrained coloring of the Sung
Io8 CHINESE PAINTERS
period and prolonged, without impairing it, the great
tradition that a century and a half could not quite
efface.
Of Yen Hui we know almost nothing; the books
state briefly that he painted Buddhist figures, birds
and flowers, and that he was past master in the painting
of demons. Nothing is known of the date of his birth
or if, by his age and training, he could be classed in
the Sung period, but several admirable paintings by
him are extant which serve to show how Sung art
was still interpreted by exceptional masters in the
Yiian period. His line is strong, broader, fuller and
more abrupt than that of Chao Meng-fu or Ch'ien
Shun-chii. The quivering vitahty that emanates from
his pictures is thrilhng. Whether the subject is a peony
heavy with dew, whose drooping petals presage the
approaching end, or a Buddhist monk patching his
mantle, the fleeting moment is seized with such intui-
tive power that prolonged contemplation of the paint-
ing creates the impression that it is suddenly about
to come to hfe. There is something sturdier, more
startling, less dreamy in these great painters who
continue the traditions of Sung art; their work alone
demonstrated that tradition could be revived and
that ancient China, under the Mongolian dynasty,
was still preserving its creative spirit and advancing
resolutely into fertile fields.
In Huang Kung-wang and Ni Tsan, we approach
a different order of things. Lines began to take oa
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EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING III
a classical character, to be divided into a series of
different types, which painters adopted according
to their temperament and requirements, and finally
became impersonal and academic. Both of these
painters, nevertheless, were under the spell of early in-
fluences extending back to the T'ang artists. Through
study of these old masters they returned to the
use of a full and sometimes vivid color, but kept a
profound love of nature, and a fresh and original vision,
by which they still perpetuated the inspiration of
Sung painting in a new form. With these painters,
however, new features appeared. Reds and purples
became dominant notes amidst rich greens which
set them off and enhanced their brilliancy. The
vision of landscape itself is somewhat more realistic
and less subtle. In all of these essentials Ni Tsan,
who died in 1374, brings us nearer to the Ming period.
Simultaneously, though quite apart, marked ten-
dencies of a different character were evident. The old
masters of the T'ang period had again returned to
favor. The vivid illumination and color distinct from
drawing, in these firm and vigorous works appealed
to the untutored barbarian. On the other hand, the
studies of the Sung period had not been fruitless;
therefore when, under these influences, the use of color
was resumed, the painters profited by w^hat the
practice of monochrome had taught meanwhile. In
the Yiian period appear those paintings which are
attacked directly with a dripping brush without pre-
112 CHINESE PAINTERS
liminary drawing, the forms being modeled in the
color itself. The Chinese called this painting "with-
out bones," in other words, deprived of the assist-
ance of line. This procedure was first used by a
painter of the Sung period, but it did not take
root definitely until the time when the practice of
using Chinese ink as a medium to express tones had
taught painters how to model forms in color itself,
making the structure depend upon color.
Seen as a whole, the Yiian period witnessed the
assembling, the concentration, so to speak, of the
ardent but scattered inspirations of the great masters
of the preceding school. It produced splendid com-
positions in which the golden age of Chinese painting
continued to be manifest. Masters arose and if, in
spite of all, they mark a reaction toward the Northern
style, seeking rich and vivid color, they give us a
vision of beauty that is equal to the work of their
predecessors.
Meanwhile grave signs of decadence were apparent.
Composition became overladen and complex and began
to lose something of the noble simplicity, greatness
and supreme charm of the old masters. It was
evident that the Yiian painters were working under
the eye of the barbarians. They yielded to the taste
of the latter for anecdote, for surmounting difficulties
and for sentimental detail. Thus far there were only
scarcely perceptible shadows and momentary weak-
nesses, w^arning signs of decadence; but when such
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING II3
signs arc evident, decadence is at hand, and that
which the virility of the barbarians had preserved
was to be lost through the creed-bound dignity of an
academic China, which was imprisoned in a rigid
system of rules.
VII. THE MING PERIOD— FOURTEENTH
TO SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES
THE Ming dynasty came into power on the wings
of national feeling. China ralhed her forces
and expelled the foreign tyrants. Without
doubt the nation cherished the illusion of rebuilding
itself upon the model of the past, and the first em-
perors of the dynasty beheved that the empire could
be re-estabhshed upon an unshakable foundation. But
the Ming dynasty, in reality, was but the heir and
follower of Yiian. The latter itself had been only
a connecting link. It had changed nothing, but had
tended rather to absorb into the Chinese system the
Northern barbarians, who up to that time had been
foreigners. It had unwittingly achieved unity for
China, despite itself and against its own incHnation.
In the administration of the empire, it had finished
the program of conservation which the Sung dynasty,
through impotence, had been unable to carry to
completion.
The Ming dynasty inherited the work of the Mon-
gols and consolidated it. It survived under their
reign and under that of the Ch'ing rulers until
the final disintegration, of which we have but recently
114
PLATE XIX. EGRETS BY LIN LIANG
Ming Period. Collection of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Junior.
E\'OLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING II7
seen the results. The peaceful ideals of the Ming
dynasty, the marked predominance of Confucianism
as a code of ethics, with certain modifications by
Chu Hsi, combined to form an ensemble that was
apparently perfect and which made it possible to
have faith in the excellence of the principles laid
down by the monarchy. Thus a school was formed
which had its own philosophy, manners and ideals,
all of them cold, stiff and without spontaneity. It
was an over-perfect machine which went like clock-
work. The world was judged with a narrow and
somewhat stupid self-confidence. The ideal dwelt
in the word of Confucian writings, divorced from
their true meaning, and so badly interpreted that they
ceased to be understood aright. The meticulous,
bureaucratic and hieratic administration of the Tar-
tars was a perfect system of government. The ma-
chine was still new and worked well, whence arose
a false impression of permanence which added still
further to the complacency of the conservative mind.
An art was necessary to this China. She had it.
It was academic painting.
Side by side with this and yet apart, other influences
were at work. Notwithstanding the prohibition of
books on heterodox philosophies in schools, accom-
panied by the widespread decadence of Buddhism,
and the complete downfall of Taoism owing to gross
practices in popular magic, and despite the disdain of
the official world, another element in China was preserv-
Il8 CHINESE PAINTERS
ing the spirit of the past, the restless spirit that craved
novelty. In all probability its obscure workings did
not appear immediately upon the surface, concealed
as they were by the strictly prescribed screen of ofTi-
cial China. They were sufficiently strong, however,
to give rise to an art which differed essentially from
academic art, and which numbered masters who
were comparable with those of the past. In spite of
adverse circumstances and the weight under which
these movements were buried, they made themselves
felt in violent upheavals. First let us draw a picture
of the decadence of an art and later we shall return
to activity and Kfe.
Official painting in the Ming period rapidly stiffened
into convention. To understand how it took shape,
we must go back to the time of Hui Tsung and observe
the method of recruiting talent in the Academy which
he founded.
That painting was allied to philosophic and poetic
thought is already known. It was always a refined
diversion of poets and painters to unite in a quest
for the beautiful. The poet wrote verses and the
painter painted a picture suggesting, sometimes re-
motely, the thought enshrined in the poem. Such
were the conditions upon which Hui Tsung instituted
examinations, following which the doors of the Acad-
emy were open to the victor. He gave, for example,
as subject for a competition a verse saying, "The
bamboos envelop the inn beyond the bridge," which
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PLATE XX. FLOWERS AND INSECTS
Ming Period. Collection of R. Petrucci.
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 121
suggested a landscape with flowing water, a rustic
bridge thrown across the stream, a cluster of bamboos
on the bank, a "winehouse" half hidden in the verdure.
All the competitors, the records say, set to work
drawing with minute care the inn which they made the
essential feature of the picture. Only one implied
its presence by showing, above a dense cluster of
bamboos, the httle banner which in China denotes
the presence of a "winehouse." Two verses of another
poem in which alhision was made to the red flowers of
spring were interpreted by the representation of a
beautiful young girl dressed in red, leaning on a bahis-
trade, for according to Chinese ideas, the thoughts
of young men in spring turn there, as elsewhere,
toward thoughts of love.
We have here an example of the subtle allusions,
at times profoundly poetic, with which Chinese paint-
ing abounds. But these things retain their value
and charm only in so far as they depend on a free
play of mind or upon personal, hving sentiments.
As accepted conventions regulated in an academic
competition, repeated with sustained eff'ort and without
enthusiasm, their rigid monotony becomes intolerable.
Such w^as the ultimate fate of that abihty to express
by half meanings, to suggest without directly stating,
to which the Sung painters attached so great an
importance. The day it was understood that a little
banner fluttering over bamboos indicated the pres-
ence of a "winehouse" in a sylvan retreat, or that
122 CHINESE PAINTERS
a young girl dressed in red symbolized the crimson
blooming of a garden pink in springtime, banners
and young girls dressed in red were seen in paintings
innumerable to the point of satiety.
Thus were established those dry conventions of a
somewhat stupid erudition which were so much the
fashion in the academic painting of the Ming and the
Ch'ing periods, and whose great success repressed the
artistic aspirations of a people. Under these influences
was rapidly assembled a complete arsenal of allegories,
allusions and symbols that gave birth to an art which
was possibly very learned, but which was inartistic
to the last degree. An academician of the Ming period
would have thought himself disgraced if he had not
proven by complicated compositions the extent of his
knowledge of things of this character. Art was no
longer anything but a kind of puzzle. Furthermore,
the decadence of eye and hand followed that of the
mind, and there next appeared a taste for brilliant
colors, overladen compositions, and fine and meticu-
lous lines, culminating in an unbearable nicety. The
work of the Academy is summed up in these words.
Let us turn aside from an art that is inert. It
robbed things of the creative spirit that animated
them. We shall now see what was achieved by those
who followed in the steps of the old masters.
The fifteenth century in China witnessed a continu-
ance of the style prevalent during the Sung and Yiian
periods. Chou Chih-mien, for example, was true
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 1 23
to that profound feeling for form, that dehcacy of
coloring, and rhythm in composition which were the
endowment of the greatest masters. Shen Chou
belonged entirely to the Yiian school, and to prove
that the old ideals were not dead, we have in the
fifteenth century the magnificent group of painters of
the plum tree, with Lu Fu and Wang Yuan-chang
at their head.
As before stated, a special philosophy was associated
with this tree and its flowers. The white petals
scattered on vigorous branches had long typified an
inner soul, whose purity was the very Kkeness of
virtue and of tenderness. Chung Jen, who in the
eleventh century wrote a treatise on the painting of
the plum tree, explains in his chapter on "the deriva-
tion of forms " that it is a symbol, a concentrated
form, a likeness of the universe. The great funda-
mental principles mingle harmoniously within it; they
express themselves in its shape and reveal themselves
through its beauty. Similar to this was the philosophy
associated with the bamboo, which endured up to the
fifteenth century. The subtle monochromes of Lu Fu
show branches of flowering plum swaying in the breeze.
In the great works of Wang Yuan-chang trunks of
old trees, still bearing hardy blossoms, stand proudly
in the magical radiance of the moon. Vibration and
power, grandeur and majesty, such are the qualities
w^hich were still sought amidst the severe conditions
imposed by the use of black and white. Here we feel
1 24 CHINESE PAINTERS
that the creative force is not yet spent. We find it
equally fresh and vigorous in the ink bamboos of
Wen Cheng-ming in the sixteenth century.
In landscape, however, new elements appear which
mark a decline. I have already laid stress on the
overladen composition w^hich developed in the Yiian
epoch. This was still more noticeable in the
Ming period. When pictorial art has had a long
series of masters, a certain eclecticism is infallibly
produced. This leads to the rejection of the direct
study of nature, in favor of viewing it only through
the eyes of the old masters. This phenomenon
appeared in China as well as in Europe. The land-
scape painters of the Ming period studied the
technique of the T'ang and the Sung epochs and
codified their system of lines, arranging them in
series according to types and schools; in short, they
drew from these a ready-made technique by which
they were controlled. Turning from nature they
yielded to imagination. They delighted in painting
fanciful landscapes and were inclined toward images
that were more external and less inspired than in the
past. Their works, however, were invested with great
charm, and the impossible disposition of their cluster-
ing peaks and oddly cleft rocks cannot but appeal
to the imagination.
In these overladen compositions the unity of the
picture is lost. We are no longer in the presence of a
simple and forceful idea, but behold a thousand in-
PLATE XXI. LANDSCAPE
Ming Period. Bouasse-Lebel Collection.
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING llj
cidents, a thousand little details, exquisite in them-
selves, but which require a search. It is a new con-
ception of landscape. We may possibly prefer the
gripping formula of Sung and Ytian art, but we are
forced to acknowledge that this later work has great
charm and extreme refinement.
To this general trend was added a new taste in
color, which became brilliant and complex like the com-
position itself, harmonious and graceful in the paint-
ings of the masters and always charming in the work
of painters of the second rank; but this was the
herald of a blatant and vulgar manner which gradu-
ally gained ground until it came to be generally
adopted by the artisans of the Ch'ing period.
While landscape under the Ming painters was as-
suming a different guise, and, forgetful of the observ-
ances of the past, was beguiling the mind by its
charm and delicacy, a new type of figure was also
developing. Here we must pause for a moment.
We have seen that figures were treated before
landscape by the painters of periods preceding the
T'ang dynasty. This early tradition had submitted
to the influence of Buddhist art and, while certain
of its elements were revived in the work of a few
masters, there is no doubt that figure painting from
the seventh and eighth centuries on, was absolutely
revolutionized. The inevitable result was a new type
in the sixteenth century. Painters studied the line for
itself, determined its proportions, and analyzed features
1 28 CHINESE PAINTERS
and drapery. As far as our present knowledge ex-
tends, their observations were not collected and codi-
fied until the end of the nineteenth century, but the
assembled writings testify that the result of their
studies w^as expressed along the lines indicated from
the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the
sixteenth centuries. Their ideal was totally different
from that of the old masters. The figure treated
for itself with but few accessories became the sole
aim of the painter. He endeavored to show the charm
of a woman's face, the dainty and elegant gestures,
the supple and voluptuous gait, and he grasped the
characteristics and peculiarities of a man's figure by
means of an intensified drawing. At times, the
injfluence of analysis was so objective that it re-
sulted in a painting closely approaching European
standards. The taste expressed in landscape was like-
w^ise evident in figures. There were brilliant and har-
monious colors, a charm w^hich became exquisite in
the coquettish and vivacious faces of women with
ivory skin and brilliant eyes, of graceful movements,
and with long, slender, delicate hands, incarnations of
the fairies of ancient legend or historic beauties whose
memory still lived.
In a word, the philosophical inspiration to which the
Sung dynasty owed its glory was discarded to make
way for the painting of everyday life, a realistic repre-
sentation of the world and its activities, which in
Japan gave rise to the Ukioyoye school, and in China
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 1 29
recruited a series of painters of the first rank outside
the limits of academic tradition.
It would be interesting to study the influence of
this movement of the China of the time of Ming
upon the originators of the Ukioyoye in Japan. It is
certain that the movement on the continent preceded
similar manifestations in the island empire by a cen-
tury, and It Is also certain that the Japanese empire
was directly Influenced by the China of the Ming
period. Chinese painters were established In Japan as
early as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There
is one of whose family name we are ignorant and who
is known only under the appellation of Ju-sue, — in
Japanese Josetsu. He left China, where the domina-
tion of official art stood In the way of an Independent
career, carried the traditions of Sung and Yiian art to
Japan, gathered pupils about him there, and had the
glory of being the founder of that magnificent school
of which Sesshlu Is the leading exponent. There is
only one small painting which can be attributed to
Ju-sue with certainty. This is preserved in a Japanese
temple. Unfortunately It Is a work of small Im-
portance which, notwithstanding its intrinsic value,
by no means furnishes sufficient information to enable
us to pronounce on the authenticity of several other
works which are said to be by his hand. We find in
the latter an extremely individual art, in accordance
with early traditions, but with the addition of some-
thing fanciful and unexpected which gives this painter
130 CHINESE PAINTERS
marked distinction. Having worked outside of China,
however, his influence was not felt in the evolution
of Chinese painting.
In the seventeenth century Ming art came in con-
tact with the art of the Europeans. The methods and
rules of the Italian ateliers of the end of the Renais-
sance were brought to China by missionary painters
whose talent was of a secondary order. The system of
monocular perspective and modeling, strongly accen-
tuated by the opposition of hght and shade, made a
forcible impression on the Chinese mind. Indications
of this are found in the Chinese books on art. But
the technical methods were too diff'erent and the
systems too much at variance to meet on any common
ground. Notwithstanding its eff'ect upon certain pain-
ters, the influence of European painting was on the
whole negligible. Father Matteo Ricci worked at the
end of the Ming period under the Chinese name of
Li Ma-tu and Father Castighone, at the beginning of
the Ch'ing dynasty, used the name of Lang Chii-ning,
but, although the former continued to use European
methods, while the latter adopted the Chinese pro-
cedure, these were only isolated eff'orts submerged in
the great wave of Asiatic evolution.
VIII. THE CH'ING PERIOD — SEVENTEENTH
TO TWENTIETH CENTURIES
THE Ch'ing or Manchu dynasty, whose downfall
we have recently witnessed, brought no new
vigor to China. Barbarians once again invaded
the aged and enfeebled empire usurping the methods,
history and organization of the preceding periods.
The change in China at the end of the seventeenth
century was only dynastic. The evolution of Ming
tendencies continued, and despite the reorganization
undertaken by Kang Hsi and maintained by his two
successors, the excessive requirements of the old
system, which had been formulated during the Sung
epoch and definitely established in the Yiian and
Ming periods, were so exacting that irremediable
decadence was inevitable. Thenceforward no great
changes in the realm of painting need be expected.
It only continued its logical evolution.
It is necessary, nevertheless, to lay stress on the
value of Chinese painting from the seventeenth to
the twentieth century, for an opinion is current that,
while there might still be something of value under
the Ming dynasty, nothing good was produced under
the Ch'ing. It is undeniable that marked signs of
131
132 CHINESE PAINTERS
decadence are seen in the latter period, but by the
side of some inferior works, others exist which maintain
the vitahty of the past and the hope of a renaissance.
In refutation of such hasty and ill informed opinion,
it is sufficient to recall a number of paintings, signed
and dated, of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
which dealers or collectors calmly attribute to the
eleventh and twelfth.
Chinese painting at the end of the seventeenth and
the beginning of the eighteenth century was still full
of vitahty. The taste for brilHant color gradually
diminished, and the composition became broader and
more noble at the hands of certain painters, in whom
is seen the revival of the vigorous race of yore. This
was the time when Yiin Shou-p'ing, more commonly
known under the name of Nan-t'ien, painted landscape
and flowers with the restraint and power of the old
style, and when Shen Nan-p'ing set out for Japan to
found a modern Chinese school which was to rival the
Ukioyoye in importance and activity. About them
was grouped a large following, foretelling fresh devel-
opments.
No support was given to this movement by the new
government, which was infatuated with the academic
style of the earlier reigns and becoming more and more
ignorant as the last years of the nineteenth century
approached. In the eighteenth century a compara-
tively large number of Chinese painters settled in
Japan, where they continued the traditions of Ming
PLATE XXII. BEAUTY INHALING THE FRAGRANCE OF A
PEONY
Ming Period. Collection of V. Goloubew.
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 1 35
art. The observation of a Nan-t'ien or of a Shen Nan-
p'ing was keen and painstaking, but the objectivity
and reahsm now coming to the fore, were conspicuous
in their works. No longer was it the world of pure
substance and abstract principle that was sought,
but the real, everyday world, the world of objective
forms studied for themselves, living their own life,
on the threshold of which the spirit halted, no longer
guided by the old philosophies.
This character was maintained up to the nineteenth
century. It is seen in the painting of flowers and
landscape as well as in figure painting. These traits are
equally apparent in an iris by Nan t'ien and a person-
age by Huang Yin-piao. The latter, working in the
middle of the eighteenth century, evoked the personages
of Buddhist and Taoist legend with a skillful brush, but
his daring simplifications were more akin to virtuosity
than to that deep reflection and freedom from non-
essentials which were the glory of the early masters.
Herein are discerned the elements of decadence,
which are wont to assume precisely this aspect of a
mastery over difficulties. For such ends genuine re-
search and the true grasp of form were gradually
abandoned.
Calligraphy and the literary style were not over-
looked, but they were carried to a point of abstraction
that is beyond the province of art. A personage was
represented by lines which formed characters in hand-
writing and which, in drawing the figure, at the same
1 36 CHINESE PAINTERS
time wrote a sentence. Doubtless that is a proof of
marvelous skill. 1 agree in assigning such master-
pieces to the reahii of calligraphy but refuse to admit
them to the domain of painting.
This apphes as well to the so-called thumb nail
painting held in high repute under the last dynasty.
In this the brush is abandoned and the Kne is drawn
by the finger dipped in ink or color. The painting is
done on modern paper of a special kind w^hich partially
absorbs the paint, in the manner of blotting paper; this
results in weak lines, and ink and color schemes devoid
of firmness, in short, in a lack of virility which places
such works, notwithstanding their virtuosity, in the
category of artisan achievements. These works are
numerous in the modern period and constitute w^hat
so many regard as Chinese painting. One cannot
be too careful in discarding them.
During every period decorative paintings, religious
paintings and ancestral paintings made after death,
were executed in China by artisans, ordinary workmen
at the service of whosoever might engage them. Such
work should not be consulted in studying the styles of
great periods or the higher manifestations of an art.
These paintings were the first to leave China and find
their way to Europe. There is no reason for analyzing
them here.
To sum up, Chinese painting of the last two cen-
turies still numbers masters of the first rank. This
alone indicates that the sacred fire is by no means
PLATE XXIII. HALT OF THE IMPERIAL HUNT
Ming Period. SLxteenth Century. Collection of R. Petrucci.
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 1 39
extinct. Who shall say what future awaits it amidst
the profound changes of today? After a period of
indecision w^hich lasted for twenty-five years, Japan
has found herself anew and is seeking to revive her
artistic traditions. It is to be hoped that China will,
at all costs, avoid the same mistakes and that she will
not be unmindful, as w^as her neighbor, of the history
of the old masters.
CONCLUSION
THIS brief survey has shown how the dis-
tinctive features of China's artistic activity
were distributed. Though subjected to vary-
ing influences, this evolution possesses a unity which
is quite as complete as is that of our Western art.
In the beginning there were studies, of which we
know only through written records. But the relation-
ship existing between writing and painting from the
dawn of historic time, permits us to carry our studies
of primitive periods very far back, even earlier than
the times of the sculptured works. We thus wit-
ness the gradual development of that philosophical
ideal which has dominated the entire history of
Chinese painting, forcing it to search for abstract
form, and \\hich averted for so long the advent of
triviality and decadence.
The goal sought by Chinese thought had already
been reached in painting when, in the third and fourth
centuries, we are vouchsafed a glimpse of it. It is a
vision of a high order, in which the subtle intel-
lectuality corresponds to a society of refinement whose
desires have already assumed extreme proportions.
Like Byzantium, heir to Hellenistic art, the China
140
PLATE XXIV. PAINTING BY CHANG CHENG
Eighteenth Century. Collection of M. Worch.
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 1 43
of the Han dynasty and of Ku K'ai-chih was already
progressing toward bold conventions and soft har-
monies, in which could be felt both the pride of
an intelligence which imposed its will upon Nature,
and the weariness following its sustained effort.
This refinement, arising from the exhaustion of
a world which even thus retained a certain primitive
ruggedness, was succeeded by a stupendous movement
which followed in the wake of the preaching of Bud-
dhism. With the new gods we see the first appear-
ance of definite and long-continued foreign influences.
Civilization was transformed and took on new fife.
Then, as in the days of the great forerunners of the
Florentine Renaissance, there appeared a whole
group of artists, prepared by the art, at once crude
and refined, of an earher people. This group set
resolutely to work at the close study of forms, ascer-
taining the laws of their structure and the conditions
of the environment which produced them. The period
in which the work of Li Ssu-hsiin, Li Chao-tao and
Wang Wei was produced may be Hkened to the fif-
teenth century in Florence with Pisanello, Verocchio,
Ghirlandajo and Masaccio. Similar conditions gave
birth to a movement that is directly comparable with
the Italian movement for, no matter how varied the
outward appearances due to difi'erences of race and
civilization, the fundamentals of art are the same
everywhere and pertain to the same mental attitudes.
The great leaders in periods preceding the T'ang
144 C H I N E S E P A I N T E R S
dynasty paved the way to the culmination which took
place in the Sung period, and thus the fruit of that
prolonged activity is seen ripening betw^een the tenth
and the thirteenth centuries. Through the gropings
of the primitive period, the heterodox philosophies and
the mystic stirrings of Buddhism, Eastern thought had
arrived at an unquestionably noble comprehension of
existence. The impersonal mystery of the universe,
its mighty principle, its manifold manifestations and
the secret w^hich unveils itself in the innermost soul
of things are the conceptions which form the inspira-
tion of Chinese painting. These lofty thoughts are
the source of that spirituality which declares itself
therein w^ith such nobility. The religion to which
they are due will seem perhaps, to certain people, to
be broader and less trammeled than our own. There
is no doubt that the entire Far East was under the
spell of its grandeur.
Up to this point art had sounded every depth and
attained the highest summits of human achievement.
Thenceforward it concerned itself with varying mani-
festations which w^ere only the different modes of a
formula that was still flexible, until the time when — the
great inspirations of the past forgotten — there appear
signs of a spirit on the quest for realism, emerging
from the ancient tradition. This is the distinctive
note in the evolution of Chinese painting under the
last tw^o dynasties. It would seem as if, even in this
guise, a universal need of the mind is being satisfied.
PLATE XXV. TIGER IN A PINE FOREST
Eighteenth to Nineteenth Centuries. Collection of V. Goloubew.
EVOLUTION OF CHINESE PAINTING 1 47
a need which we, too, have known after experiencing a
chilHng academicism, and when modern culture had
overthrown the ancient idols. Chinese painters have
thus completed a round analogous to that traveled
by our own artists.
For the Far East as for Europe, the problem now
presented is that of a revival. Bent beneath the
weight of the prestige of the past, too learned in the
last word of culture, modern art is seeking to find
itself, groping bhndly, full of promising but unfinished
works. The time has come when there are signs
throughout the world of a desire for a universal civili-
zation, by the reconcihng of ancient divergencies.
Europe and the Far East bring into contrast the
most vigorous traditions in history. Henceforward
there is interest for both civilizations in study-
ing and in coming to understand a foreign ideaL
Though incomplete, these pages will perhaps help to
show that such a mutual comprehension is not im-
possible and that, if egotistic prejudices are over-
come, apparent dissimilarities will be resolved into a
profound identity. Thus will arise the elements of a
new culture. In coming to understand a mood which
so fully reflects an unknown world, the European mind
will discover principles which w ill make it rise superior
to itself. May this broad comprehension of human
thought lead Europe to estimate with greater justice a
civihzation numbering its years by thousands, and to
refrain from thwarting the fulfillment of its destiny.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
An Introduction to the Study of Chinese Pictorial Art. Her-
bert A. Giles, MA., LL.D., Professor of Chinese in the
University of Cambridge. Second Edition, revised and en-
larged. London, Bernard Quaritch. 191 8.
Painting in the Far East. Laurence Binyon. Second Edition,
revised. London, Edward Arnold. 191 3.
The Flight of the Dragon. Laurence Binyon. Wisdom of the
East Series. London, John Murray. 191 1.
Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art. Ernest F. Fenollosa.
2 volumes. F. A. Stokes and Co., New York. 1912.
Scraps from a Collector's Note Book. F. Hirth. Leiden, New
York, 1905.
Chinese Art. Stephen W. Bushell, C.M.G., B.Sc, M.D. Vic-
toria and Albert Museum Handbook. 2 volumes. London.
1910.
Chinese Painting. Mrs. Francis Ayscough. The Meyitor of
Dec. 2, 191 8, Serial No. 168. New York.
149
INDEX OF PAINTERS AND PERIODS
The following summary furnishes additional information re-
garding the painters to whom reference has been made. Those
to whom the subject is not famihar will fmd this of assistance
in placing in their proper historical order the different trends which
have been indicated elsewhere. They will also fmd dates useful
in comparing, if so desired, the artistic evolution of China with
that of Europe. This, however, is only an outhne. The names
of some great masters are omitted, for I have no wish to overload
the margin of a statement which should be kept clear and con-
venient of access. I trust nevertheless that these few notes
in concise form will be of use in connection with the preceding
text.
I. BEFORE THE INTERVENTION OF BUDDHISM
The Bas-reliejs of the second Han dynasty belong to the second
and third centuries of the Christian era.
Ku K'ai-chih, also called Chang-k' ang and Hu-tou, was born
in Wu-hsi in the province of Kiang-su. He hved at the end
of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century. His style,
resembhng that of the Han period, informs us as to the
character of painting from the second to the fifth century.
It is such as to indicate a long antecedent period of cultiva-
tion and development.
Hsieh Ho (479-502), painter of the figure. He wrote a small
book setting forth the Six Canons or Requirements of paint-
ing. This work informs us regarding the philosophy of art
in China of the fifth century.
151
152 INDEX OF PAINTERS AND PERIODS
II. THE INTERVENTION OF BUDDHISM
It is difficult to set an exact date for the first contact of Bud-
dhist with Chinese art. It may be assumed that the influence of
Buddhist art began to be felt noticeably in China in the fifth
century. In the seventh and eighth centuries it was so wide-
spread as to be definitely established.
III. THE T'ANG DYNASTY
A.D. 618-905
Wu Tao-tzu, also called \Vu Tao-yiian. Born in Honan toward
the end of the eighth century. His influence was felt in
Japanese art as well as in that of China. He painted land-
scape, figures and Buddhist subjects.
Li Ssu-hsun (651-715 or 720) is considered as the founder of the
Northern School. He appears to have felt the influence
which Buddhist art brought in its train.
Li Chao-tao, son of Li Ssii-hsun, hved at the end of the seventh
and beginning of the eighth centuries. He is said to have
varied from his father's style and even surpassed it.
Wang Wei, also called Wang Mo-k'i (699-759), poet, painter and
critic. The great reformer of Chinese landscape painting.
Considered as the founder of the Southern School and the
originator of monochrome painting in Chinese ink.
Han Kan, renowned in the period t'ien-pao (742-759), Accord-
ing to tradition he was a pupil of Wang Wei. His school
possessed in the highest degree knowledge of the form,
characteristics and movements of the horse.
IV. THE SUNG DYNASTY
A.D. 960-1260
Twig Yuan. Tenth century. Landscape painter. He worked
in both the Northern and Southern styles.
INDEX OF PAINTERS AND PERIODS 1 53
Chii Jan, Buddhist monk. Tenth century. He was at first in-
fluenced by the work of Tung Yuan, but later created an
individual style.
Ma Yiian. End of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth
century. Member of the Academy of Painting. He was
the author of a strong and vigorous style which characterized
the school founded by him.
Hsia Kuei served in the college at Han-Iin in the reign of the
Emperor Ning Tsung (i 195-1224). He was considered a
master of chiaroscuro and atmospheric perspective.
Ma Lin, son of Ma Yiian. Thirteenth century. His work shows
that he painted even more in the tradition of the Southern
School than his father and uncle.
Li Lung-mien or Li Kung-lin. Born at Chou in Ngan-huei. He
held pubHc offices, which he resigned in iioo to retire to the
mountain of Lung-mien, where he died in 1106. Noted for
his calhgraphy as well as for his painting. At one time in
his hfe, under rehgious influences, he painted a great number
of Buddhist figures.
Mi Fei or Mi Yilan-chang or Mi Nan-kung (i 051- 11 07). Cal-
ligraphist, painter and critic. He used strong inking in a
style in which the simphfication of monochrome is carried
to the extreme. He had a son, Mi Yu-Jen, who painted in
his father's style and lived to an advanced age.
Hui Tsung, emperor, poet, painter and calhgraphist. Born in
1082, ascended the throne in iioo, lost his throne in 11 25
and died in captivity in 1135. In the first year of his reign
he founded the Academy of Cafligraphy and Painting. He
made a large collection of valuable paintings and rare objects
of art which was scattered at the plundering of his capital
by the Tartars in 1225.
154 INDEX OF PAINTERS AND PERIODS
V. YUAN DYNASTY
A.D. 1 260- 1 368
Chao Meng-Ju, also called Tsu-ang. Born in 1254. Man of letters,
painter and calligraphist. He was a great landscape painter
and in tiie first rank as a painter of horses.
Ch'ieri Hsiian, also called Ch'ien Shun-chii, lived at the end of
the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century.
He painted figures, landscape, flowers and birds. He em-
ployed the style and methods of the Sung dynasty.
Yen Hui lived in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. His
paintings were numerous and indicate a master of the first
order. He painted many Buddhist and Taoist subjects.
Huang Kung-wang. Fourteenth century. At first influenced by
the style of Tung Yiian and Chii Jan, he later acquired an
individual style and was one of the great founders of schools
in the Yiian period.
N'l Tsan, also called Yiin-Iin (1301-1374). Man of letters, callig-
raphist, collector of books and paintings. He is considered
to be one of the greatest painters of his time.
VI. THE MING DYNASTY
A.D. 1 368- 1 644
Chou Chih-mien lived in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
His subjects were principally birds and flowers.
Shen Chou, also called Shen Ki-nan or Shen K'i (1427-1507).
Landscape painter. His composition is at times overladen,
as is often seen in Ming art.
Lu Fu lived in the fifteenth century. He made a special study
of the plum tree in monochrome. He is comparable to the
great Sung masters.
Wang Yiian-chang. Died in 1407 at the age of 73. He painted
the bamboo and plum tree in monochrome. He carried on
INDEX OF PAINTERS AND PERIODS I55
the Sung tradition, with which he was directly connected,
and was the founder of a school.
Wen Cheng-mmg (1480-1559), painter, poet and calhgraphist.
He is often compared with Chao Meng-fu.
Ju-sue. Known only under this appellation. He lived in the
fifteenth century and went to Japan, where his influence
was marked. (Japanese Josetsu.)
VII. THE CH'ING DYNASTY
1644-1912
Yun Chou-p'ing, appellation Nan-t'ien, true name Yiin Ko (1633-
1690). He studied at first under the influence of Wang
Shu-ming and Siu Hi. He painted figures, flowers and
landscape.
Shen Nan-p'ing lived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
He was called to Japan in 1720 and founded there the school
of Ming-Ch'ing or the modern Chinese school.
Huang Yin-piau or Huang-shen. At the height of his career
between 1727 and 1746. He painted landscape and, toward
the end of his hfe, legendary figures of Buddhism and Taoism
with a technique that was skillful but often precise and
somewhat weak.
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